dir: Robert De Niro
[img_assist|nid=815|title=James Jesus Angelton, you have a lot to answer for, in hell, hopefully|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=324|height=475]
A man finds one facial expression in the 1930s, and sticks with it for the next thirty turbulent years. He plays some role in the formation of that caring, sharing organisation known as the CIA. And he’s a crap husband and father. They should make fifty films about this guy.
The plot centres around the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, but only uses that as an anchor from which it jumps spastically around in time in order to tell the important story of how one of the crucial players in the formation of the US’s intelligence infrastructure was a pretty soulless chap. Did he have a soul before the CIA, did he lose it after one too many black ops? Are some of the greatest bungles in American history his fault? And where, apart from in the reader’s underpants, are those WMDs after all?
I don’t know. The relevant people are probably dead by now, so it’s a mute moot point. And the story, as written by Eric Roth, is a fictionalised account of the life and exciting times of James Angleton; it’s not a biopic. All the G man, flat top, pasted down haircuts, horn-rimmed glasses and fedoras in the world, or at least in this flick can’t change that fact.
Here, as played by Matt Damon, the character is called Edward Wilson, and we watch his rise from geeky distant boy to geeky distant man. He comes from that idyllic, especially American ‘Mayflower’ kind of culture of cotillions, wearing black tie tuxedoes to breakfast and glee clubs, but rises even higher in their ranks once he gets to prestigious Yale. Ah, Yale. You, sir, have the boorish manners of a Yaley.
You might think this is a joke, but we even get to see him cavorting about with the infamous Skull and Bones club, where there are scenes of grown men wrestling around in filth whilst being pissed on by the elder members. That’s not an exaggeration. Even more disturbing are the scenes where these future captains of industry and presidents of the United States sing the Whiffenpoof song. I wish I was making that up. If you thought this was the stuff of conspiracy theory and lunatic ravings of class warriors, it’s a real society whose members actually have been Presidents, including the current genius President and his father before him.
The flick isn’t an expose on these secret societies of privilege, nepotism and hidden influence, although it is about the machinations of the CIA. Which is, I guess, at least originally represented as being the product of privilege, nepotism and hidden influence.
Wilson, a fiercely determined man with a love of poetry, is selected by the Powers that Be for a plum role in Counterintelligence as war looms with the Nazis in Europe. He specialises in the gathering of intelligence, spreading misinformation, manipulating accurate information and doing all sorts of things to ensure the goals of the Allies are achieved. He spends some time learning the ropes at what I assume is Bletchley Park, and he makes the acquaintance of a debonair British agent called Arch Cummings (Billy Crudup). Arch seems to be based on Kim Philby, so if that name means anything to you, you know where that part of the story is going.
Also in Britain he makes the reacquaintance of a former professor (Michael Gambon), where the themes of trust and betrayal most readily are revealed.
There is a lesson to be learnt here, in that there’s no trusting anyone when you work in this kind of paranoid field, especially the people you work with and have to trust.
As Wilson achieves greater and greater success in his professional life and his rise to power, circumstances continue to degenerate in his personal life. Although married to society belle Clover Billingsley Winthropson Dalrymple Ponsonby (Angelina Jolie), which you would think would be the path to happiness if you got to plow her on a nightly basis, their relationship is just slightly warmer than the surface temperature of Eris, the planetary body recently discovered that’s even further out of our solar system than Pluto is.
They don’t even have the decency to indulge in perfunctory, soulless sex anymore. Either Wilson hates his wife because he felt trapped into marrying her (she falls pregnant after the shameless hussy climbs on board and rides him like a pony on a merry-go-round), or because he didn’t get to live with the deaf love of his life, Laura, from college.
Whatever the reason, they are virtual strangers to each other. Apart from acting like a rich strumpet at the beginning, Jolie has practically nothing to do but overact as the aggrieved neglected wife. The role could have been successfully by any harridan with inflated lips that look like hefty strips of liver.
Everyone else does decent work throughout in the acting stakes. De Niro especially is surprisingly competent in the directorial chair, and has a good cameo as General Bill Sullivan (based on General Wild Bill Donovan, who helmed the World War II version of the CIA, the Office of Strategic Services), giving one of his more subdued but stately performances. He can’t help but give himself the most important lines of the film, though, when he talks about the soul sapping nature of their work, and the necessity to avoid the accumulation of power that is inevitable and contra to the essence of a democracy.
We are given the clear impression that Wilson is who he is, or becomes who he is, because of something more profoundly affecting than his job. It’s a common theme in cinema that a man’s job and how he performs it is central to shaping his character. Bum or irresponsible characters can’t hold down jobs and usually, over the course of a movie, have to earn the love of a good woman or the respect of their kids (usually post-divorce) through holding down and succeeding at a job. The Good Shepherd doesn’t say that Wilson becomes cold and distant from life because of the ever-increasing paranoia he is host to, or the mounting stress of the intelligence game during the Cold War (unlike the character who this flick is based on). He is traumatised most of all by the death of his father at a young age. More than that, Wilson has literally carried around a secret from that fateful day, one which guarantees that he could never let a single human into his confidence, and that he could never trust a living person for his entire life.
There are a tonne of tradecraft elements represented in the film, all taken from history, but the film avoids the preposterousness of gadgetry or the more melodramatic cloak and dagger stuff we’ve come to expect. Not a single person gets killed with radioactive materials; no-one gets killed with a poison-tipped umbrella. But the clinical, bureaucratic brutality of the game still comes across to the viewer. These men are different; they have to be to aspire to this power, to exercise it, and to desperately try to maintain it. We get a sense, if only a sense of the nature of these men.
Wilson has a nemesis in the form of his equivalent in the KGB (which is a misnomer, since at the time that the Ulysses character is introduced, the KGB didn’t exist yet), but the conflict between them (though unlikely) isn’t turned into cat and mouse games, macho pissing contests or car chases. It is handled with a surprising amount of intelligence and sensitivity. It’s remarkable, because I can just see how many producers and executives would have demanded that changes be made to the representations. Wilson handles any of the scenes with Ulysses the way you would think the historical figure would, but not how you’d expect a movie character to. It adds to the flick’s overall credibility, which is ample. Wilson, ever vigilant, gives nothing away.
That being said, the steady story elaborations, the casual revelations and the measured pacing will not be to everyone’s taste. The downbeat tone and smothering atmosphere is more of an acquired taste, I would say, and I’m not surprised that the flick didn’t set the world on fire. I also cannot work out why the flick cost hundreds of millions to make.
As decent as many elements of the movie are, certain plot holes and the revelation of the identity of a crucial informant instrumental in the Bay of Pigs fiasco towards the end really do damage my appreciation of what otherwise would have been a superb film. The faults are not so bad that they ruin the flick overall, but they do cause me to wish they’d done things differently. Still, there’s no fault to be laid at the feet of Matt Damon or De Niro, who both do excellent work here. Damon has played the two extremes of the spy business now, which shows at least that he has ample range as an actor. His role here is so controlled, so cold that the one scene where he acts out is all the more effective. You expect bust-out scenes with such clenched characters, still, it’s well handled.
After watching the film, I did a bit of research on James Angleton, and found out he was pretty much as depicted here, and, if anything, was even more intense, ruthless and powerful than the film even indicates. When a man makes it his life’s works to ferret out enemies, he begins to see them everywhere. And if there’s one thing you can definitely say about Angleton, it’s that he was convinced everyone was America’s enemy, and therefore his.
Not for everyone, but for fans of Cold War focused stuff, you could do worse.
7 times I believe, in Wilson’s place, I would have devoted more of my life to drilling Clover repeatedly rather than overseeing Byzantine spy networks and organising failed attempts to kill Castro out of 10.
“Let me ask you something... we Italians, we got our families, and we got the Church; the Irish have the homeland, Jews their tradition; even the niggers, they got their music. What about you people, Mr. Wilson, what do you have?”
- “The United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.” – The Good Shepherd.
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