Spies Lead Such Interesting Lives: Black Bag
They work in a world where a poker face is your default position.
Grade: A-
Michael Fassbender plays George Woodhouse alongside Cate Blanchett as Kathryn St Jean. They’re happily married British spies, but one of them may be a traitor. George is tasked with finding which of his co-workers stole a top-secret device code-named Severus and Kathryn is one of the suspects.
Kathryn and George work amongst the graves of their colleagues’ romantic relationships, which their colleagues dig themselves. They work with other spies in a glass and steel, high-security citadel in central London and their co-workers include: satellite imagery specialist Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela), psychiatrist Dr Zoe Vaughan (Naomi Harris), George’s old friend Freddie (Tom Burke) and the ambitious young man Colonel James Stokes (Rege-Jean Page). They’re all seeing each other but without much success. Clarissa suspects Freddie’s sleeping with another woman. George invites them over for dinner and confirms her suspicions and she stabs Freddie in the hand with her knife. “That was the most boring thing you could possibly have done,” Freddie tells her.
His hand’s pinned to the dining table with a knife. He should be screaming in agony but he’s bitching at his girlfriend. Dr Vaughan and James aren’t much better. She calls him to her office and tells him they’re through. He reminds her of the time they had sex on her office couch. She reminds him that happened because she wanted it and now she doesn’t want it. “You’re cold,” James says without appearing all that heartbroken himself.
It’s like being spies makes dating impossible. In fact, that’s exactly what director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp are getting at. “I can’t date anyone outside the service because they’re outside and I can’t date anyone inside the service because we’re all liars,” Clarissa fumes in frustration at George. “When you can lie about everything…how do you tell the truth about anything?” Clarissa, George and all the others work in a world where a poker face is your default position. Kathryn arrives at Dr Vaughan’s office for a regular session. They smile at each other and talk in civil tones but their tongues delicately slash each other trying to draw blood. Vaughan tells Kathryn she always knows when Kathryn is coming. I can sense the aura of hostility, Vaughan says and with a straight-faced, like she hasn’t just called Kathryn a total bitch. Kathryn holds an even straighter face and tells Vaughan “That’s the first interesting thing you’ve said.” Ouch.
It’s one of many verbal and fantastically subtle knife fights in this film for which the whole cast, Soderbergh and Koepp should be cheered. This is why spies lead such interesting lives (at least in films). They sit comfortably in a chair chatting pleasantly while holding a gun at your heart. In their company, there’s always a gun under the table, a bomb in the cake and poison lacing the lady’s lipstick. A ruthlessness lurks beneath the smile that’s never afraid to spring out. George reveals Freddie’s infidelity, blackmails Clarissa with her own and exposes Dr Vaughan’s taste for erotic fiction at a dinner party and Kathryn later turns that information against Dr Vaughan. You’ll find yourself echoing James’s words to Dr Vaughan again and again throughout this film: “You’re cold.” These people find it so difficult to have romantic relationships because their job is to lie and coerce without a second thought. I wish it wasn’t so difficult for us to cheat, George’s friend Meachum tells him in the film’s opening scene. But it is. It’s who they are.
Except for George and Kathryn. They have a house and sleep together in pyjamas in the same bed. George cooks while Kathryn dresses upstairs in the bedroom as they prepare to host guests. “It’s been a while since we had a traitor to dinner,” Kathryn says. “At least knowingly.” She then tells George off for putting a truth drug in the food. Darling, she says, you may not drug our guests. All the spots and colours of a happy marriage exist unblemished by their work. Can it remain so once George finds out who’s the traitor?
What Michael Mann did for cops and robbers in Heat, Soderbergh does for spies in Black Bag. It’s not about the MacGuffin. “It’s about us,” as Kathryn tells George.