4.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.13.19
This fact-based drama could not be better timed.
More than ever, we must be reminded of the imperative necessity of speaking truth and integrity to power.
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| Once exposed and arrested, Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley) is allowed a brief visit from her husband, Yasar (Adam Bakri). In a touching act that feels genuine, he brings her a thick jacket, because he knows the jail cell will be cold. |
Along with the value of the Fourth Estate, and its role in exposing the filthy secrets of power-mongers who believe they can get away with anything.
And of the foolishness of reflexively relying on a crutch such as Spell check.
Director Gavin Hood makes smart, thoughtful films that don’t get near enough attention in the mainstream market. Folks who stumbled across 2015’s Eye in the Sky were mesmerized by its intriguing depiction of a wartime conundrum — do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of a few? — as it related to the potential civilian fatalities that would result from a drone strike targeting a suicide bomber.
Hood’s film had the intensity of an intimate stage drama, and it was comforting (if naïve) to imagine that the civilian/military chain of command actually might ponder such consequences. At the end of the day, though, Eye in the Sky — however provocative — remains a mere philosophical exercise, because it’s fictitious.
That’s not the case with Official Secrets.
Hood’s newest film isn’t merely a depiction of actual events; it illuminates an impressively brave act that should be a humiliating footnote in this country’s reckless 2003 invasion of Iraq. Instead, the incident is all but unknown on this side of the pond … which, frankly, is shameful.
It made far more noise in England, where — to this day — people debate whether Katharine Gun is an honorable patriot on par with our own Daniel Ellsberg … or a traitor to her country.
That should be enough to get you into a movie theater. Better still, Hood and his co-scripters — Gregory and Sara Bernstein, adapting Marcia and Thomas Mitchell’s nonfiction book, The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War — have crafted their film with the clever precision of a multi-act suspense thriller.
Somewhere toward the middle, you’ll begin to wonder: How the hell could we not have known about this?
Add a terrific ensemble cast of top-notch British actors, and you couldn’t ask for more.
