A Call to Spy (2019/2020) Movie review

There are a few things that give me pleasure these days, other than time spent with my family of course. Things like having free time to pursue my interest in photography, or to browse in bookshops, particularly well stocked second hand book shops – usually called “preloved books” or “preowned” or “nearly new books”… Or the luxury of sitting in a movie theatre and seeing a really good film.

Yesterday my wife and I….or me and my wife, whichever term you prefer….went to our local Event Cinema in Havelock North to watch the world war 2 spy movie “A Call to Spy”, which is based on true stories about women spies who put their lives on the line, and often made the ultimate sacrifice, for the war effort in defeating Nazi Germany.

It originally premiered mid 2019 at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, but wasn’t released to major box office in the USA until late in 2020….hence the two dates in brackets in the main heading. Written, produced by and starring the very talented Sarah Megan Thomas in the main role of Virginia Hall – an American living in the UK who had ambitions to be a diplomat but was repeatedly turned down and was eventually offered the opportunity to help Britain’s war effort by becoming the first female spy to be dropped into France during WW2.

What made this even more admirable was that Virginia had a wooden leg, nicknamed Cuthbert. Curious but true. She shot herself in the foot during a hunting expedition when she tripped and her shotgun went off years earlier. She was an intelligent and incredibly brave individual who risked her life for the cause over and over during her time firstly in unoccupied France, then Nazi occupied France. She was a thorn in the side of the Germans, who gave her the nickname Artemis, was at the top of the Gestapo’s most wanted list and was considered “the most dangerous of all Allied spies.” Klaus Barbie (SS and Gestapo officer) aka the Butcher of Lyon was quoted as saying “I would give anything to get my hands on that limping bitch”.

She set up a spy support network, named Heckler, in Lyon, where she became an expert in logistics, resistance organisation, assisting in the supply of money, munitions and weapons, helped airmen downed by German gunfire escape back to Britain, provided shelter and medical help, help break prisoners out of prison, took part in espionage….this woman was amazing. Small wonder then that after the war she was given the Distinguished Service Cross and became the first female agent of the newly created CIA Special Activities Division.

Historical photo – Virginia Hall of Special Operations Branch receiving the Distinguished Service Cross from General Donovan, September 1945

The movie isn’t just about Virginia Hall though, it’s a tribute to many other women spies and radio operators most of whom lost their lives in the service of King and Country, behind enemy lines.

Sarah Megan Thomas does a wonderful job of writing, producing and staring as the spy with the code names of Marie and Diane. She is ably abetted by Radhika Apte as Noor Inayat Khan – a pacifist Muslim radio operator (SPOLIER ALERT….who was caught and executed by the Germans after being held in Dachau concentration camp)……and this was the point in the movie that a solitary tear rolled down my cheek as I remembered visiting Dachau on a recent trip to Europe and recalled the eerie silence in the camp, despite the presence of hundreds of visitors, a feeling that I had never experienced before and never want to again….. and Stana Katic as Vera Atkins – female spy-master – an intelligence officer who worked in the French Section of the Special Operations Executive from 1941 to 1945…and who later was awarded the CBE.

It was a story long in the making and heavily researched by Thomas who searched through historic records and interviewed surviving family members of Virginia Hall before penning the script. It can’t have been an easy task as Hall was, as you’d expect from a spy, very secretive about her past and shunned the limelight. To quote Craig R. Gralley “Hall left no memoir, granted no interviews, and spoke little about her overseas life–even with relatives. She…received our country’s Distinguished Service Cross, the only civilian woman in the Second World war to do so. But she refused all but a private ceremony with OSS chief Donovan–even a presentation by President Truman.”

It’s a movie about bravery, persistence, selflessness, with action and tension about a group of heroic people who I had no idea even existed. We often see movies about the French Resistance fighters, some of whom were women, but I had no idea at all about the British (and American) female spies who put everything on the line. Hall herself had her cover blown and had to escape France over the Pyrenees, on foot, covering 50 miles over two days in the snow, in order to cross into Spain and then to Portugal to get a ship back to England (I’d struggle on two good feet never mind one foot and a wooden leg)…..and then retrained as a radio operator and went back into France. Bravery of the highest order….or insanity? Watch the movie and decide for yourselves.

Although there are men in the movie who also do a good job – including Linus Roache who plays Vera Atkins’s boss Colonel Maurice James Buckmaster OBE – it’s a movie primarily about women, not only written, produced by and staring women, but also directed by a woman – Lydia Dean Pilcher, with music by Lillie Rebecca McDonough. And bloody good it is too. Do see it. Link to movie trailer is below.

(350) A Call to Spy – Official Trailer | HD | IFC Films – YouTube

Radioactive and Resistance….2 one word movie titles – review.

We’ve had about 3 weeks of rain recently. I’m itching to get out into the garden but it’s a sodden bog. I’m wondering whether the fact that we now have a pool instead of a lawn will add or detract from the property value.

What is there to do when you can’t go for a walk and you’re tired of reading? Not a lot if you’re still on coronavirus lockdown, but thankfully here in New Zealand at least we have the option of going to the movies. Focal Point Cinema in Hastings, where me and my wife are both members, had sent my wife a notification that she has a free ticket to any movie waiting for her because she’d just had a birthday. What a great excuse to go to the movies. AND on Monday and Tuesday afternoon sessions they throw in free coffee or tea and a variety of baked goods. Very yummy and well received.

There were 3 movies on the list that we wanted to see (the one we missed was The Burnt Orange Heresy) and since the other 2 were based on real peoples lives we decided to do a double header. The 12.30pm viewing of Radioactive – about Mme Curie’s life and work, followed by the 3pm showing of Resistance – a movie about mime artist Marcel Marceau’s time with the French Resistance during WW2. Both fascinating movies which set right some of my false assumptions about both people….for a start I thought that they were both French born, but Marie Curie – maiden name Maria Salomea Skłodowska – was born in Warsaw, Poland. And of course all I knew about Marcel Marceau was of his (annoying) mimes. I knew nothing of his heroics while with the resistance, nor that he was Jewish. But, back to the movies.

Radioactive – A story of the scientific and romantic passions of Marie Sklodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie, and the reverberation of their discoveries throughout the 20th century.

Rosamund Pike in the lead role was exceptional as the self absorbed Marie Curie who put her work above everything and everyone else in her life…..if the movie is to be taken at face value. What I can say is that she did a very good job at portraying a scientist who was outspoken and had a brilliant mind, but was in equal parts not a very likable person. A psychologist would have had a field day with this woman who was a bit of an enigma, being both self assured but also constantly seeing herself as a victim because she was a woman in what was otherwise a mans world. Indeed it was almost impossible for a woman to become a renown scientist back then because of gender prejudice. Even when she and husband, fellow scientist Pierre, were nominated in 1903 for the Nobel Prize in Physics, initially only Pierre’s name was on the citation. It was only after he had insisted that Marie deserved recognition for her contribution to the discovery of Radioactivity that her name was added and they both became recipients of the Nobel Prize.

However, she got the last laugh by becoming the only person, so far, to win a Nobel Prize in 2 separate scientific fields, in 1911, by winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Rosamund Pike is not an actress that I like to watch. That’s not because she isn’t good at her craft, she is perhaps too good an actress. Her portrayal of Mme Curie leaves me admiring the character’s single minded determination and brilliance as a scientist but as a wife and mother she is a dreadful wretch of a human being with few redeeming qualities….although she does soften toward the end of the movie.

Marie Curie – the sole woman surrounded by other scientists and professors…..including Albert Einstein.

There is a phrase spoken by Pierre Currie in the movie where he asks “The question can be raised whether mankind benefits knowing the secrets of nature”…. And that I think is a very valid question, the answer to which is hinted at in the movie by injecting little scenes of things that would happen in the future….that did happen since the discovery of radiation and radioactivity, such as the destructive power of the atomic bomb and the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl, as well as the benefits of the Xray. It is an excellent question. Mankind (now Humankind because of our PC world) is meant to be the most intelligent species and yet we are the only species which has built the technology to destroy not only ourselves, but all life on earth, and we continue to put military spending over the welfare of people and planet. One could ask is that intelligence or stupidity? Are we actually advanced enough to handle the responsibility? Frankly I don’t think that we are.

The acting was very good, as were the costumes and film sets. The baron wastelands of WW1 battlefields were particularly thought provoking. If I was to rate it overall out of 5 stars I’d feel compelled to give it 4. Very much worth paying money to see on the big screen.

The second movie, Resistance, with Jesse Eisenberg in the lead role was entertaining and disturbing in turn. Written and directed by Jonathan Jakubowicz it is about the French Resistance in WW2 and particularly about how mime artist Marcel Marceau – real name Marcel Mangel, a French born Jew – helped to smuggle hundreds of Jewish children out of France and over the mountains into Switzerland.

It’s a movie that shows both the best and the worst of humanity. The good being the number of people and organizations who put their own safety in jeopardy in order to save the lives of the Jewish orphans and the bad….the despicably wicked… as portrayed by French collaborators, the Nazi soldiers and particularly Klaus Barbie, aka the butcher of Lyon. Barbie (SS and Gestapo member) was renown for taking an active part in the murder and torture of prisoners, including the flaying alive of some unfortunate souls. By flaying alive I mean he removed the skin from the entirety of the victims body while they were still alive and then went home to his wife and child. If that is not the epitome of evil I don’t know what is.

Again, as in the previous movie, the acting was first class and we – the audience – come to absolutely hate and detest German actor Matthias Schweighöfer who plays the character of Barbie, (who incidentally has nothing at all to do with the doll by Mattel).

All joking aside it is a serious movie about life and death situations and the betrayal of the Jewish people by friends and neighbours out to protect their own self interests.

It’s a really good story about courage, relationships, the reliance we have on one another and about putting the lives of others before that of your own. I don’t want to give away much about the movie as it’s one that I think we should all see in order to understand and be witnesses to man’s inhumanity to his fellow man….and conversely the selflessness and goodness of mankind.

The “woke movement” would have us tear down statues of what they consider to be “bad people” and remove them from history, but sometimes we need to be reminded of the bad people and their atrocities in order to learn from them and hopefully not repeat them. Just my opinion.

Except for the final scene where Marcel is performing a mime in front of the American soldiers who helped liberate France, (at which point I would have gladly put a bullet through him myself – what can I say? Mime is just not my thing), I thought it was an excellent movie. Entertaining and thought provoking – it gets another 4 stars out of 5 from me.

As a last thought, I think we need to remember that in times of trouble, charismatic leaders can induce others to do things that they would not otherwise do. Hitler was a populist leader who presented to the German people the Jews as the cause of all Germany’s ills. A target for all Germany to unite against. The atrocities inflicted on the Jewish people by otherwise sane people was totally illogical and driven by unjust hatred. We are once more in troubled times, with charismatic leaders in charge of some countries and others waiting in the wings for the right conditions in order to take over and enforce their ideals on otherwise sane people. Please think and consider the humanity or inhumanity of your actions before you blindly follow orders.

Again many thanks for reading this post and thank you for likes, shares or comments….positive or negative.

The Man in the High Castle – a book within a book and more than meets the eye.

I have just returned from a visit to the Pacific north-west – mainly staying in San Francisco, along with a side trip to Portland, Oregon.

A couple of things that I wanted to do while in this area was to firstly visit a number of independent book stores, and secondly buy books either by writers who live in the area, or books with stories set in the area. And so, during a visit to Powell’s City of Books in Portland (about which I will blog in detail in another post, shortly), I bought a second hand copy of Philip K. Dick’s “The Man in the High Castle” which is set, for the most part, in San Francisco. BUT it’s a very different San Francisco to that of today.

Set in 1962, just 7 years after the end of WW2, it offers up an alternative ending to the second world war. In this book the war was won by the Axis – Japan and Germany (with the Italians in tow). The west coast of the USA is in the hands of the Japanese and the east coast is under German control. There is a slim buffer zone – kind of a neutral area – in the middle, down the Rocky Mountains, where American life is more or less business as usual. In San Francisco where much of the novel is set, American’s are allowed to live, work and run businesses, but very much under the eye of their superiors – Their Japanese masters.

I don’t want to give away too much of the plot as it would spoil things for potential readers. So here is a brief summary.

The Japanese are clearly in control of American lives and businesses in San Francisco and the west coast – and have stamped Japanese values into the American culture and yet, perversely it seems, the Japanese also hold American memorabilia in very high regard – almost like priceless antiques. Part of the story follows a memorabilia shop owner who is constantly trying to find pieces to satisfy the whims of his high ranking Japanese clients. This is a world where a Mickey Mouse watch is a sought after item.

As well as the memorabilia man, the novel follows a number of other lives and reveals that some of them have been reading a book – banned on the east coast by the Germans, yet a blind eye is turned to it on the west coast by the Japanese rulers…..some of whom also read and have copies of the book. The controversial book in question is called “The Grasshopper Lies Heavy” – a book that gives an alternative and, for some, unthinkable ending to WW2 where the USA, Britain and their minor allies are the victors. Whilst the Japanese are intrigued by the book, the Germans absolutely hate it, and it’s author, Hawthorne Abendsen, is believed to be in hiding, in fear for his life, in a fortress like building somewhere in the Rocky Mountains…hence the title of Dick’s book – The Man in the High Castle.

The story indicates that although the Germans and Japanese were on the same side during the war, there is a certain amount of political friction between the two over their control of the former USA. This “friction” boils over into violence…..BUT, I’ll say no more about that. Read the book.

Philip K. Dick is mostly known for his Sci-fi books. This is more of an alternative history/thriller and, to be honest with you, is the only one of his books that I have read…so far. It has had a lot of hype, many people love this book and I have a liking for a dystopian story. It is, however, a strange book for me to try to give a rating to. On the one hand I found the idea of the Japanese/German victory and control of the USA quite fascinating. AND I thought that the premise of the other book – The Grasshopper Lies Heavy – with it’s real ending of the war was a nice twist of irony.

Dick starts off slowly focusing on the every day lives of the main characters and builds things up nicely for a big ending….starting very slowly, almost boringly slowly, and gradually adding action and tension. I kept looking at how many pages there were left and thinking that he wasn’t leaving a lot of time for the big finish. BUT I found the ending to be a bit of an anti-climax and the whole thing left me feeling quite flat.

As a result I could only give it a 3 out of 5. I’d say it’s worth a read just to see what all the hype is about.

If you like the idea behind an Axis victory, but like a little more action and thrills, I’d recommend James Herbert’s book “48” – which is set in a post war London where Hitler has been victorious by using a biological weapon which targets specific blood groups. It follows one mans survival story.

Interestingly, Goodreads give The Man in the High Castle a rating of 3.63 and Herbert’s “48”, which I felt was a far superior story, rates only slightly higher on 3.75

As usual – thank you for reading – your comments and shares are always appreciated. AND please remember to support your local book sellers.