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Photo: Nick Wall / IFC Films
Damn, the British are doing discreet and paranoid procedural dramas like Official secrets Well, with omnipresent cold and no flash: the crisp cuts like a knife. In this one, set up in 2003 and 2004, white and pasty men discuss whether a whistleblower, Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley), is a hero or a traitor for disclosing a memo from the United States and leading the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). ) to unearth members of the UN Security Council. The directive itself is shady, but it is the monstrous final phase. The GW The Bush administration has the impression that no matter how falsified information about Saddam Hussein's ties to Al-Qaeda and his alleged biological / nuclear weapons of mass destruction, few are Tony Blair, the Bush watchdog, at sanction an invasion of Iraq. Other countries of the United Nations Security Council will need a wee push. As an intelligence analyst, Gun believes that the reason for being war is not just absurd but immoral, not to say illegal. When this note – written by an NSA figure named Frank Koza – appears on his computer screen, his jaw drops out.
Knightley has a strong jaw to give up. Relaxation means consternation, sometimes total despair. Set, it signals awareness. In Official secretsit is soft and put in series. Combine that with eyes that water more often than eyes and you get an indelible portrait of a tormented conscience. How can Gun do not share this note with millions of lives (British, American and Iraqi) at stake? Gun knows that if she discovers that she will be prosecuted under the UK's Official Secrets Act of 1989, and that the immigration status of her Muslim husband, Yasar, would be threatened. (Yasar is a Kurd, and the Kurds were the most notorious victims of Saddam, so she does not have the claim to pretend to the Baathist regime, she is anti-allegiance.) do not copy the memo, do not to pass it on to a former anti-war colleague who would have left him to an anti-war activist who would leave him to a journalist … She should just keep her head down and do her job.
We know from the start that she did not do it. Official secrets opens with Gun in the dock, after emerging by a private staircase to the center of an audience room filled with white men wearing wigs. He is asked, "How do you plead?" She opens her mouth and the titles say, "A year ago." So, there is no doubt as to whether she will forward the memo or if she will get caught, but only how will this happen. and what will come 90 minutes later when we come back to this courtroom. Will she plead guilty and accept her sentence or ask the government to argue for the legality of the war?
The memo, in this case, is found in the offices of the Observer, which is a highly pro-Iraq but seemingly free invasion (in the newsroom, anyway) of Blair's loyalists. Matt Bright, bright-eyed, is Martin Bright, the journalist who receives and pleads for the publication of the memo. Matthew Goode (his hair cut short to the mount) is his colleague, Peter Beaumont, who uses his sources to verify the accuracy of the note. (No one wants to be hoax.) Rhys Ifans in gruff, heavy and disheveled fashion is Ed Vulliamy, the Observer corresponding to the United States who can not believe that his superiors make fun of Bush and Co. Conleth Hill is a treat as editor, a cynical corporate man who must make the final decision to bury the story or risk his newspaper rep. In a long series of scenes (interspersed with Katharine Gun's ongoing drama), the Observer Journalists and editors have stealthy meetings in clubs, restaurants and on tennis courts with men who know or know someone who knows something. All respondents (deep context) think that the memo is real, but can only say it with small jerks and non-denials. Did I mention how much the British do these scenes? You scan their faces for these contractions, these fleeting moments when their lips touch and their cheeks are slightly colored to signal their confirmation.
Ralph Fiennes is the most subtle of them, as lawyer Ben Emmerson, who runs a group called Liberty, which is fighting for civilians. He joined the film midway when Katharine was held in tiny rooms (aerial photo of her body stretched out on a stiff bed, with only a coat to keep her warm) and is followed in the bus by men who live to look up and down and threaten. The lips and pallor of Fiennes naturally incline towards moist skin. So, towards the end of his first meeting with Katharine, a slight smile appears and he says, "You have nothing to gain and everything to lose. I think it speaks loud enough about you, "you want to burst into tears. When he says to her, "We are here to help," it is as if God had finally offered to remove some of the burden. All the villains of the film are older white men, so it's warm to the heart when you go to the side of good. Even the man we saw playing MI-6's M and Voldemort think Katharine is a glitch.
These are the most enjoyable moments of the film: when different people tell Katharine, depopulated and frightened, that she acted well and that they are proud to know her. Daniel Ellsberg thumbs up (not in front of the camera, but we talk about it, and that name has so much weight). We need this assurance because the director, Gavin Hood, has clearly studied the work of directors like Alan Pakula (there is a Deep Throat joke at a meeting in a parking garage) and knows how to frame Katharine, Matthew Bright and the others to suggest that someone looks or that someone can appear at any time, even when nobody does it and no one will do it. It is even more frightening to think that the events of this movie happened 15 years ago and that surveillance technology has come a long way. I can almost feel that my keystrokes are being watched as I write this. Denunciator = YES! Katharine Gun HERO. Official Secrets VERY GOOD :)!
Looking at the film, you may realize that Donald Trump is the best thing from a historical point of view that could have happened to George W. Bush. When you see Bush say that the danger of Iraq is imminent – a few "weeks, not months" – with the tongue strangely embedded between his lips, as if to signal the urge to invade his hunger, all that will come back: how he and his facilitators were cruel and privileged. The irony is that Koza memo that launches Official secrets did not matter: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al. decided that they would not need US authorization. Anyway, the operation would prove to be a pakewalkalk!
Katharine Gun, we still need you.
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