Philip Seymour Hoffman's Last Great Film Role

A Most Wanted Man is an old-fashioned spy story with all too current stakes.  Based on the John le Carré novel of the same title, the characters are weary but dogged — if we like them.  The others….slither.

In his last film, Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a German spy named Gunter Bachmann who acknowledges that he commits acts against the German constitution while trying to keep tabs on and track down potential terrorists.  He is the quintessential John le Carré spy, ever out in the cold, sad, lonely, probably an alcoholic, and dedicated to protecting the world, his contacts, and his own belief in what is just, which is not the same as legal. 

Philip Seymour Hoffman as Gunter  Bachmann.  Photo Credit: Roadside Attractions

The time is now, the city is Hamburg, and it is shocking.  I haven’t been to Germany since before 9/11, but I cannot recall litter except in the vicinity of U.S. army bases, or graffiti anywhere. In today’s Hamburg, both are everywhere.  The light is harsh — the sun doesn’t shine, it glowers in a garish show of illumination without warmth.

Gunther trusts no one in the German political arena and certainly not the American (represented with chilling arrogance here by Robin Wright, her façade clean, modern, even chic). Gunter will use entrapment, extortion, blackmail, cajoling and hugging to get what he wants from the informants he has cultivated into his network.  This is all for the greater good, and he at no time wishes to use violence in his network.  That’s for the Americans.  He will use threats of deportation, he will kidnap and intimidate. He coerces young Jamal (Mehdi Dehbi) to sneak and spy on his own family and mosque, and just how far Gunter expects his network to go is shocking.

Robin Wright as the  American, Hoffman as the German. Photo Credit:  Roadside Attractions.

The tension level is consistently high as we follow the slightest facial expression of each of the driven, intense members of Gunter’s clandestine team:

• Irna (Nina Hoss)
• Maximilian (Daniel Brühl)
• Rasheed (Kostja Ullman)
• Niki  (Vicky Krieps)

Performances are low key, realistic, frightening.  Claire Simpson’s editing carries us along, shocks us, stops us, tosses us forward into the sliced and slivered scenes.  The shots are stark, the lighting cold, the river lifeless.  This is a new cold war and it drains the color out of everything in Benoît Delhomme’s cinematography.

We become part of Gunter’s team, so it is “we” who are following two men — a wealthy philanthropist who may be funneling money to terrorists and a Chechen Muslim who has entered Germany illegally, seeking asylum.  Abdullah, the philanthropist, appears to be suspected just because he’s Islamic.  He is sophisticated, kind, and beautifully played by Homayouin Hershadi.  The other subject of surveillance, Issa Karpov, appears like a homeless person on the brink of a psychotic break.  He is suspected of being a terrorist, particularly since he confessed to committing terrorist acts when tortured by the Russians.  But, as Irna states, who wouldn’t, when under torture by the Russians.  We are all breakable.  Issa (born Ivan) reveals himself extremely slowly in Grigoriy Dobrygin’s searing portrayal.

The Chechen finds refuge with another Muslim family seeking asylum in Germany, a Turkish mother and son.  Another network.  These people reach out to their lawyer, Annabel Richter played by Rachel McAdams, to try to get asylum and make contact with a banker who has something belonging to Karpov.  The lawyer is left wing and idealistic, or she’s just doing the opposite of what her family wants her to do.  She rides her bicycle all over Hamburg but can go to high or low society.  The character and her actions are totally predictable and Ms. McAdams does nothing to make it more.

Rachel McAdams and Grigoriy Dobrygin.  Photo Credit:  Roadside Attractions.

Rainer Bock is chilly as the angry German agent Dieter Mohr, working for an agency that is not clandestine.  To fend off this short sightedness, Gunter even talks to the Americans in hopes of gaining an ally for his longer-term and much smarter intentions.

Willem Dafoe is a well-heeled banker, angry, beautifully dressed even without comparison to the slovenly Gunter.  The banker’s wife sits at home, seen from outside as if on display before floor-to-ceiling windows, dressed for an evening out in a tight sheath and high heels, or perhaps for a photo shoot. She is not going anywhere.  This is a house not a home, an artist’s lifeless rendering of high fashion and just as stiff. Everything’s a pose, roles for the playing in the proper setting. 

Modes of transportation helped delineate character:  Issa came to Hamburg by mass public transportation, Annabel rides a bicycle, Gunter drives an inconspicuous old sedan, and the banker has a beautiful sleek machine that screams “Look At Me!”  One wonders if he’ll change cars at the end of the story.

Willem Dafoe and Philip Seymour Hoffman.  Photo Credit: Roadside Attractions.

Delhomme’s cinematography combines with Sebastian T. Krawinkel’s production design which engenders claustrophobia in both tightly enclosed spaces and open ones with long, empty views.  The images contrast the work done and lives lived in the shadows — Gunter retreats to the underground world of rathskellers — with the not-clandestine German government and the glamorous American meeting in high rise offices and restaurants with plate glass windows and strategic views.  There’s nothing pretty to look at no matter how high. 

Director Anton Corbijn skillfully manipulates us as Gunter manipulates his network and his team.  It’s exhausting.  Corbijn takes his time, lays out the story, lets us come to know his people. We care about them.  This is no typical American thriller.  Occasionally some driving is rather fast, but nothing else.  Except the abrupt ending.  Andrew Bovell’s screenplay (based on le Carre’s novel) is brusque, brisk, and as chilly as the cinematography, lending layers to each individual we meet. 

The actors do finely detailed, subdued work in this subdued world.  Grigoriy Dobrygin’s Issa allows us in as carefully as an abused animal, shaming our assumptions about him.  Robin Wright’s American is that brittle sophisticate, cold as ice, an adept listener with unfathomable eyes.  I recently read an article about le Carré and his ever-growing dislike of America.  Believe it. It’s right there on the screen.

As for Mr. Hoffman.  His performance is so naturalistic, he is so subsumed into the person of Gunter with Gunter’s entire life always alive in him, he becomes Gunter.  Consequently Gunter becomes our representative in the story, his view becomes ours.  We are in Gunter’s head, we become him.  Betrayal of Gunter is betrayal of us.  That is the power of Philip Seymour Hoffman. He is already missed.

The power of le Carré and Corbijn and Bovell is the niggling feeling that the next time you’re in a pub or on a train or getting into a taxi, you will look around you and wonder who’s watching.  Or you should. 

~ Molly Matera, signing off to read le Carré’s novel, which I assume will leave me as depressed as this thrilling film did.

History + Film + Robert Redford = A Story Well Told

Generally I don't think people should learn their history from films.  "The Conspirator" is the exception that proves my rule.  “The Conspirator” is intense, driving ever forward into a dark time in American history.  This intricate and intimate film tells more than the story of Mary Surratt, the lone female charged with seven men in the conspiracy to murder the U.S. President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of State in 1865.  The film’s tag line is “One bullet killed the President, but not one man.”  We only ever hear about John Wilkes Booth.  This film assures that no one will ever forget the conspiracy – or Mary Surratt -- again.

The pictures are bright or stormy out of doors, dim and soft inside, with light flickering through curtains, halos around candles, and deep shadows in the corners.  There is a mustiness, a layer of dust, dirt and muck as director Robert Redford, writers James D. Solomon and Gregory Bernstein and the American Film Company pull us back in time.  The film’s performances are deep, crisp, with familiar actors becoming less so when embedded in the mid 19^th century -- and I don’t merely mean costumes and haircuts.

For me to give many details would do the film a disservice.  It is a riveting story, extremely well told.  It is deep without slogging or slowing down. The characters are multi-faceted real people, the prices paid to personal relationships, not to mention life, severe.  This is history, so it is no spoiler when I say that the film ends with the statement that, after Mary Surratt was hanged by the military tribunal, a law was passed that all citizens of the United States deserved civil trials, not military.

The film starts on a Civil War battlefield, with Union soldiers and officers suffering in the aftermath of a bloody fight.  Some lay dying, and we meet Union Captain Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy), wounded himself, trying to keep his friend Baker (a tad overplayed by Justin Long) alive by keeping him awake.  The battle over, Union soldiers search the field for survivors, and Aiken’s and Baker’s friend Hamilton (James Badge Dale in a quiet performance of an earnest, sensible, and loyal friend) finds the wounded pair.  We next see them all healed but still in uniform for a party.  Everyone is dressed to the nines, and an abundance of candles light the night.  A lawyer by profession, Aiken has a career and a pretty girl (Alexis Bledel) in his future, and plans for networking on his mind.  

A pleasant evening of social positioning is interrupted by the actions of the conspirators, Confederates attempting to throw the Union government into chaos and turn the tide of the war they had already lost.  Some of the scenes in the early part of this film will be surprising – and somewhat shocking – to many.  The assassination of President Lincoln was one act; the attempted murders of Secretary of State William H. Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson were also on the bill.  We see the young conspirators building their courage, sweating, pushing forward -- or running away.  We see some inexpert and frightening violence.  All that the writers and director throw at us brings us to the height of emotion felt in the capital city in April 1865 and prepares us for the political and legal wrangling to come.  It’s an interesting and stirring story, true to its own time, but also to ours.

Robin Wright is in rare form as Mary Surratt, drawn, dried out and silent, with an extraordinary core of strength.  Catholic, Confederate, and female, everything is against her in Washington, DC.  It was her boarding house where several of the conspirators, including John Wilkes Booth (Toby Kebbel) and Mary’s son John (Johnny Simmons), met and plotted.  The question in her trial was whether or not she knew that, or was just a landlady.  Evan Rachel Wood plays Anna Surratt, Mary’s daughter, sullen, romantic, stubborn, and loyal.  Very fine work, I believed every moment.

James McAvoy is totally true as Aiken.  He is like everyone else – he survives the war and is preparing for civilian life, riding his popularity and connections to a successful career.  He sees not only his President but his Commander-in-Chief murdered and naturally wants all the guilty parties brought to justice.  It just doesn’t occur to him that the law requires that all parties accused of a crime be defended competently, even if in the wrong court of law.  He does not want the duty foisted on him by his employer, Reverdy Johnson, to defend a woman accused of conspiring to kill the President.  Day by day, though, as he does his job as best he can, he questions himself, he opens his mind, he learns, and then he must question others.  Questioning popular opinion as well as those in authority makes for a doubtful future.  McAvoy passionately engages us so that we see what he sees, feel what he feels; we watch his face and understand what he is coming to understand.  Very nice work.

Tom Wilkinson is the Maryland lawyer Reverdy Johnson for whom Aiken works.  Johnson insists that Mary Surratt is entitled to an adequate defense even in time of war, national exhaustion, and hatred of the conspirators.  He leaves it to Aiken to carry forward the defense, perhaps honestly thinking this young officer will be viewed more fairly than the southern-sounding Marylander.  Perhaps not.  Wilkinson is not at the top of his game here, but rather a smidgen over it.

Kevin Kline lives the part of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, staunch, determined, sure of himself.  He’s an extraordinary actor, brilliant in his youth, and steadily more so as he ages.  Long may he reign.

Colm Meaney is the leader of the military tribunal that tries Mary Surratt, Danny Huston the prosecutor Joseph Holt. Both are interesting players, making it clear that what’s behind what sometimes appears to be a witch hunt may be a little more complex.  This was not the writers trying to be even handed.  This was a fair presentation of different points of view of the people trying to hold the country together in a time of crisis.  These two actors were up to the task.

Aiken’s girlfriend Sarah Weston clearly hoped for a settled future with a war hero and a lawyer, until he actually did his best to follow the law and defend his unpopular client.  Alexis Bledel is a rather quirky, charming actress, but doesn’t quite fit in this role. 

Jonathan Groff gives an odd performance as Louis Weichmann, a friend of the Surratt household who turned against Mary.  Although it was clear he lied through his testimony, as did others, his disposition was so off-kilter that he distracted from the story.  I thought of him not as Weichmann, but as Groff the actor making strange choices that, whatever they were, might have worked on stage, but which were not working on film.

None of the testimonies mattered, of course.  The military tribunal had essentially decided on Mrs. Surratt’s guilt – the only disagreement was about hanging her.  All they wanted was her son, John, but he remained in hiding out of the country.  However the audience might have felt in the beginning of the film, when politics overrules law, even those who stood with Secretary of War Stanton might waver.

John Cullum has a small but choice role as Judge Wylie, who stands for the law and the rights of citizens instead of following the hysteria and short-term vengeance of other leaders of the nation. Cullum is simple and straightforward and gravelly as a tired old man who pulls what he requires from young Aiken.

Frederick Aiken believed in the law, but the law did not prevail at this moment in history.  Perfectly understandable political vengeance prevailed, our divided country was wounded in a way it did not even notice, and Frederick Aiken left the profession of law as if it were a mistress who had betrayed him.

Beginning to end, Robert Redford’s direction is flawless, the story moves forward, pauses for a moment’s reflection, then moves forward again to its inevitable climax.  This is history, after all. While people and quotes from primary research sources are bound to be left out to keep the story moving and uncluttered, these filmmakers were clearly determined on deep research and accuracy.  "The Conspirator" tells the story of the people as they were and their actions, all in a well-structured and -performed film.  We follow Frederick Aiken on his emotional and intellectual journey, we feel with him, we rage with him, we change with him.  The solid, crisp, yet deeply felt script by James D. Solomon and Gregory Bernstein is expertly handled by Mr. Redford.  I’d be interested in any story these three might venture to tell together in future.

The viewer’s mind is riveted to this shocking story in the past, but finally flashes forward to our present conflicts and issues.  Nothing really changes, does it.

~ Molly Matera, turning off the computer, but not the light.  Lots of reading to do…