Operation Mincemeat

dir: John Madden

2022

In the long tradition of British films set during World War II, this is yet another prestigious flick pretending that the actions of a plucky group of patriots essentially won the war against Hitler.

No, it’s not The Imitation Game, where Benedict Cumberbatch “invented” computers in order to beat the Nazis’ codes, with the help of a bunch of other people, including Keira Knightley. No, it’s not Enigma, where Kate Winslet and a different group of code breakers at Bletchley Park try to win the war (without the help of Alan Turing or Benedict Cumberbatch) single-handedly.

And it’s not Their Finest, a film from 2016 that conjectured that the actions of a plucky group of screenwriters and filmmakers making patriotic movies during the war changed the nation’s fortunes and turned the tide of the war. Despite ALL of these movies having many of the same people in them.

This is a completely different group of smartarses who take it upon themselves to win the war single-handedly by fabricating British plans to invade Greece, so as to distract the Nazis and make them re-deploy their forces from Sicily, which is the REAL target for the Allies.

The thing is, though, they feel like if they just send a letter to Hitler, with the fake plans, he might not receive it. If they tell his mates they might not give him the message. Plus they might think it’s bullshit, since it is bullshit.

So how best to trick the worst people in human history? Why, put the fake plans in a briefcase and attach it to a corpse, and then drop it off the coast of Spain, of course.

Thank makes perfect sense. No wait, that’s needlessly complicated and would never work.

If there is a villain in this flick, it’s not actually the Nazis, who, despite the fact that Kanye West keeps telling me that Hitler actually had some positive qualities, don’t really factor into it. No, the putative villain is played by Jason Isaacs as Admiral Godfrey. All along, from beginning to end, he is constantly telling the ‘heroes’ that their plan is bullshit and should never work, and will probably get tens of thousands of the Allied forces killed.

He does exactly the same job that Charles Dance did in The Imitation Game, with his character telling Turing constantly that not only would his plan not work but that he’d never make it, ever, and that his musical career would never get off the ground.

Sorry, I temporarily confused him with the “first wife” that they have in musical biopics, who don’t believe in their husbands, and nag them to come home constantly, before they go off to become Johnny Cash Elvis Eminem James Brown Ray Charles the III.

How can the Admiral know that he’s right and they’re wrong, and project such contemptuous disdain through those steely blue eyes of his?

Because he’s absolutely right. It’s a terrible fucking plan.

You don’t have to tell me this is based on a true story – I have no doubt that this actually happened. I had heard about it long before this movie came along. It’s just that, it’s so fucking silly. If it had any impact, it’s not because of what they dreamed up. It’s because someone, through stupidity or malice, convinced the Fuhrer that it was true, or someone close enough to him.

Or maybe they didn’t, I dunno. I thought a lot of thoughts while watching this flick, least of all “well, if the Nazis are convinced you’re going to invade Sicily, then… why not invade somewhere else?” Was there nowhere else they could drop in? I dunno. It just seems like stubborn obstinacy on their part. As well., if they’re already convinced, because their own spies tell them you’re making preparations to invade Sicily, why wouldn’t you invade Greece for reals? I mean, I know there are a lot of reasons not to go to Greece. The people can be…particularly obnoxious. Accommodation? Not so great. And the food is greatly overrated unless you like an endless stream of fatty lamb in various forms.

Ugh. So, yeah, maybe Sicily made more sense. Anyway, clearly I know better than Churchill, the Admiralty and everyone else.

The people here, mostly Ministry of Defence type people, are really sneakily creating the basis for the James Bond films so many of us have watched, some multiple times, some begrudgingly. We are watching the creation of MI-6, even if they don’t specifically spell it out.

One of the people working at the office set up for the operation is, literally, Ian Fleming (Johnny Flynn). I mean the actual author – the character he plays here would go on to write all the original James Bond novels. And even the scheme to trick the Nazis comes from another spy novel written by someone else in the service. One of the other main characters, the one who first put the proposal forward that would become Operation Mincemeat, Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew MacFadyen) laments at one point that all these aspiring spy novel writers could be more of a risk to them than the Germans.

The two who seem to be in charge are Cholmondeley and Montagu (Colin Firth), and while they have the same ambition, they are coming from very different places. Montagu, a lawyer, is Jewish, and knows what’s going on (they all knew, never let them tell you that people didn’t know what was happening), and has a wife and family he sends to the States for safekeeping.

You know, in case his plan doesn’t work. Because it’s all down to him. They work well together, but they have very different personalities. Montagu just seems sad, most of the time, and Cholmondeley suffers from having a mother that doesn’t think he’s much of anything compared to his war hero brother who died in Burma. His one job, in her eyes, is to get the remains back, but Cholmondeley doesn’t have much sway with anyway, and no-one really likes him that much.

He does seem to like one of the staff in the office, being Jean (Kelly McDonald), but she looks at him like he’s made of liver and onions.

After all, she only has eyes for Montagu. It’s not really a love triangle when two people seem to really like each other, and one guy’s standing off to the side, resentfully jerking off. What happens in the flick is that, in creating a persona for the corpse they intend to put the fake plans on, they indulge in their own creativities, but this opportunity allows them to project their own hopes and dreams onto a man that doesn’t really exist.

Captain William Martin doesn’t exist, and neither does his girlfriend, Pam, whose picture they also put in one of his pockets. And in her backstory, Jean projects herself, and the yearning she has to reconnect with someone again (after losing her husband in the war). Through the creation of this relationship for these people, again, neither of whom exist. Montagu and Jean pretty much think they have a relationship, despite never touching.

Ah, yes, a love that’s pure and chaste. Cholmondeley, whose “love” for Jean, and maybe Montagu, is anything but pure and chaste, tries to do everything he can to fuck things up for them or remind them of their duty or all that other self-serving bullshit. Even then, Montagu seems to care more about Jean than he even does about the mission, despite…all the reasons.

It would be easy to see Cholmondeley as something of an embittered villain, but then the evil Admiral shows up telling him, “Oy, Montagu’s probably a Soviet spy like his brother, so help me get the dirt on him, and I’ll get yer brother’s remains back on ol’ Blighty.”

Classic Aryan blue-eyed anti-Semitic bullshit.

As critical as I may be sounding about all of this, and as staid and conventional as I’ve painted the flick to sound, I actually found it quite enjoyable to watch. Colin Firth, Matthew MacFadyen, Kelly McDonald, and Penelope Wilton, as Montagu’s right hand woman / office manager, are great performers of long standing. However clichéd their characters might seem they all imbue them with layers of personality, and perfectly balance their job (saving the world from the Nazis, one corpse at a time) and the individual issues they’re going through.

And also, let’s not forget what a tongue in cheek thing it is to cast the two men most famous for playing Darcy in different iterations of Pride and Prejudice. Come on now, that’s outright taking the piss.

Compared to some other crap director John Madden has done (like that version of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which, up until the coronavirus, was one of the worst things to ever be inflicted upon the world), this is downright competent, and devoid of cheesiness (unlike Shakespeare in Love). I thoroughly enjoyed it despite my qualms (c’mon, Firth however wonderful he is, is in his 60s, MacDonald is in her 40s: why are we still getting this Mar-December bullshit?), and, despite the fact that I don’t believe for a second that this actually worked, they do a very convincing job of making it seem like something so far-fetched actually worked, thanks to the dedication of the people involved and a bit of good luck.

7 times that poor guy who had to give multiple handjobs in order to get the Spanish to give the info to the Nazis, he was the real hero out of 10

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“But along side that war, another war is waged. A battleground in shades of gray, played out in deception, seduction, and bad faith. The participants are strange. They are seldom what they seem, and fiction and reality blur. This war is a wilderness of mirrors in which the truth is protected by a bodyguard of lies. This is our war.” – purple prose much, Mr Fleming? - Operation Mincemeat