{"id":78298,"date":"2015-11-01T17:28:55","date_gmt":"2015-11-02T01:28:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=78298"},"modified":"2015-11-01T17:28:55","modified_gmt":"2015-11-02T01:28:55","slug":"bridge-of-spies-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=78298","title":{"rendered":"Bridge Of Spies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/article\/425696\/bridge-spies-review\">Armond Whites writes<\/a>: The dark, creepy murk of Steven Spielberg\u2019s 2011 Lincoln also seeps into his new film, Bridge of Spies, an account of the 1957 exchange between the U.S. and the Soviet Union of captured espionage agents, the Russian Colonel Rudolph Abel and the American pilot Gary Francis Powers. This gloom can be attributed to Spielberg\u2019s suggestion, in both films, of American political anxiety. After the ebullient history of Amistad, he has gone to the shadowy partisan chicanery behind Lincoln\u2019s 14th Amendment to the Constitution and now to this consideration of the United States\u2019 lack of innocence in global matters. Scenes of Abel\u2019s and Powers\u2019s secretive missions, and eventual imprisonment, juxtapose how our government and military matched Russia\u2019s unprincipled subterfuge. <\/p>\n<p>In Lincoln the weird darkness passed for cynical realism, but in Bridge of Spies it conveys disillusionment. When attorney James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks) defends Abel before the Supreme Court, the imagery is overcast, somber; when Powers is detained by a Russian court, sunlight shines through the casements. Seem anti-American? In visual terms, Bridge of Spies is an ACLU movie. Through Donovan\u2019s difficult maneuvers (against public disapproval and family discouragement), Spielberg pursues the sanctity of civil-liberties issues. Donovan, an insurance lawyer who served at the Nuremberg trials, must fight Cold War paranoia \u2014 presented as an eternal threat to America democracy. <\/p>\n<p>Good guy Donovan (his stern face features Hanks\u2019s twinkling eyes) represents a common man nobly acting against judicial and CIA expediencies; he defends the principles within the Constitution, referred to as \u201cthe Rule Book.\u201d Robert De Niro\u2019s overlooked The Good Shepherd (2007) was a more complex history of the social ideas at stake in CIA operations, but Bridge of Spies shows simplistic sentimentality when Donovan exclaims, \u201cAmerican justice is on trial! We\u2019re in a battle for civilization!\u201d Those are Tony Kushnerisms, hangovers from his over-rhetorical Lincoln script, which encouraged an unfortunate sanctimony in Spielberg\u2019s newly politicized vision. After Kushner, the lights have dimmed in Spielberg\u2019s worldview, making Bridge of Spies a glum experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Armond Whites writes: The dark, creepy murk of Steven Spielberg\u2019s 2011 Lincoln also seeps into his new film, Bridge of Spies, an account of the 1957 exchange between the U.S. and the Soviet Union of captured espionage agents, the Russian &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=78298\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hollywood"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78299,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78298\/revisions\/78299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}