Part of Weekend Classics: Spielberg
The “bridge of spies” of the title refers to Glienicke Bridge, which crosses what was once the borderline between the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR. In the time from the building of the Berlin Wall to its destruction in 1989, there were three prisoner exchanges between East and West. The first and most famous spy swap occurred on February 10, 1962, when Soviet agent Rudolph Abel was traded for American pilot Francis Gary Powers, captured by the Soviets when his U-2 reconnaissance plane was shot down over Sverdlovsk. The exchange was negotiated by Abel’s lawyer, James B. Donovan, who also arranged for the simultaneous release of American student Frederic Pryor at Checkpoint Charlie. Working from a script by Matt Charman and Joel and Ethan Coen, Steven Spielberg has brought every strange turn in this complex Cold War story to vividly tactile life. With a brilliant cast, headed by Tom Hanks as Donovan and Mark Rylance as Abel — two men who strike up an improbable friendship based on a shared belief in public service.
“A gravely moody, perfectly directed thriller…. A meticulously detailed period piece that revisits the anxieties of the past while also speaking to those of the present….BRIDGE OF SPIES is, like most of Mr. Spielberg’s films, a consummate entertainment that sweeps you up with pure cinema.” —Manohla Dargis, New York Times (Oct 14, 2015) “A daring, studied, mannered true story that is at once remarkably genuine and deeply cinematic at the same time. It’s one of the best films of the year.” —Brian Tallerico, rogerebert.com (Oct 16, 2015) “The most purely expressive workout of a theme Spielberg has tackled before, in LINCOLN and the earlier AMISTAD: the moment when the misty-eyed principles of American democracy get measured against its laws and policies…. An ode to holding fast to moral principles, geopolitics be damned, becomes a hurrah for old-fashioned big-screen storytelling.” —Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, A.V. Club (Oct 12, 2015)
