OPERATION MINCEMEAT : Tuesday 17th May 2022.

I saw 'OPERATION MINCEMEAT' at my local multiplex earlier this week and this M Rated British WWII drama film is Directed by John Madden whose previous film making credits include 'Mrs. Brown' in 1997, 'Shakespeare in Love' in 1998, 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin' in 2001, 'Proof' in 2005, 'The Debt' in 2010, and 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel' in 2012 and its sequel 'The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel' in 2015. This film is based on the book 'Operation Mincemeat : The True Spy Story that Changed the Course of World War II' by Ben Macintyre. This is the second feature film about the operation, following the 1956 film 'The Man Who Never Was' based on Ewen Montagu's book of the same name. This film saw its World Premier screening at the British Film Festival in Australia in November 2021 before its release in the UK in mid-April, and in the US (on Netflix) and here in Australia from last week, has so far grossed US$10.5M and has garnered generally favourable reviews. 

In April 1943 the UK is deeply rooted in WWII. Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu (Colin Firth) remains in England while his wife Iris (Hattie Morahan) and their two children leave for the relative safety of the United States. Ewen is a Jewish lawyer who is fearful that if they remain and Germany gains the upper hand and invades England, then his family will be persecuted. He elects however, to stay when he is appointed to the Twenty Committee (a WWII counter espionage and deception organisation of the British Security Service). His trusted secretary and good friend of Iris, Hester Leggett (Penelope Wilton) sticks by him.

Meanwhile, Winston Churchill (Simon Russell Beale) has made a commitment to the United States that her Allies will invade Sicily by July of that year in order to push northward through Italy and onward into Europe. Sicily though is considered an obvious target and is likely to be heavily defended by the German united armed forces. Admiral John Godfrey (Jason Issacs) informs the Twenty Committee that Britain must trick Nazi Germany into believing the Allies will invade Greece and Sardinia. Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen) proposes an operation from the Trout Memo (a document comparing deception of an enemy in wartime with fly fishing), which would involve a corpse carrying false secrets and washing ashore. Despite Godfrey's serious reservations, he gives Montagu and Cholmondeley permission to plan the operation with Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming (Johnny Flynn).

The team set up an office under the name of Operation Mincemeat. As planning progresses Montagu and Cholmondeley finally obtain the body of a vagrant named Glyndwr Michael (Lorne MacFadyen), who died by suicidal poisoning. Bentley Purchase (Paul Ritter) was the physician who sourced the body of Michael, and helped preserve and prepare the corpse for the rouse. The team gives Michael the fake identity of Major William Martin, complete with a very detailed backstory, ID photos, and an engagement. A widowed secretary in the office, Jean Leslie (Kelly Macdonald), offers a photo of herself to serve as the fake fiancee under the name of Pam. Cholmondeley has a crush on Jean, but soon comes to realise that Montagu and Jean share a romantic connection which results in Cholmondeley becoming jealous and lashing out from time to time at Montagu.

Godfrey suspects that Montagu's younger brother, Ivor (Mark Gatiss), is in fact a Russian spy. He coerces Cholmondeley to spy on Montagu and, in return for which, Godfrey will locate and return the remains of Cholmondeley's brother, who was killed in action in Chittagong, Bengal. Cholmondeley reluctantly agrees.

A specialist MI5 driver is chosen to transport Montagu, Cholmondeley, and the corpse to the R.N. Submarine Base in Holy Loch, Scotland. The corpse is then loaded onto the submarine HMS Seraph. In the early hours of 30th April, the Seraph arrives in the Gulf of Cadiz and drops the corpse into the sea. It is later washed ashore and found by fishermen in Huelva, Spain. Operation Mincemeat attempt to get the fake documents to Madrid. The mission is however, hampered by bad luck, as the Spanish have resisted Nazi corruption better than anticipated. Captain David Ainsworth (Nicholas Rowe), the British naval attache in Madrid, meets with Colonel Cerruti of the Spanish Secret Police in one last attempt to land the papers in the hands of the Nazis. When Martin's personal items and the secret letters are eventually returned to London supposedly intact, a specialist at Q Branch figures out that the documents were indeed tampered with. This gives Montagu, Cholmondeley and the team hope that Germany retrieved the fake information.

Jean is ambushed in her own home at night and threatened by a man claiming to be a spy for an anti-Hitler plot within Germany. She tells him that Major Martin was traveling under an alias but the classified information was real. After he leaves, Jean informs Montagu and Cholmondeley. They come to believe that Colonel Alexis von Roenne (Nico Birnbaum), who controls intelligence in the Nazi High Command, sent the man to verify information so Von Roenne could undermine Hitler. However, they have no way of being completely sure. Montagu takes Jean to his home for protection much to Cholmondeley's chagrin, but shortly afterwards she accepts a job in Special Operations and leaves London.

On 10th July, the invasion of Sicily commences along the beach heads of the south-west and south. The news arrives that the Allied Forces suffered only limited casualties, the enemy is retreating, and the beaches have been held. They receive a message from Churchill soon afterwards saying 'Mincemeat swallowed. Rod, line and sinker'. 

Early the next morning, while sat outside on the steps beside the Duke of York Monument just off The Mall, Cholmondeley admits to Montagu that he received his brother's remains in return for spying on him. Feeling sympathetic and relieved that Operation Mincemeat was a success, Montagu offers to buy Cholmondeley a drink even though it's only 8:00 o'clock in the morning.

Before the end credits role, the closing epilogue states that Operation Mincemeat saved potentially thousands of lives, Montagu reunited with Iris after the war and remained happily married until his death in 1985, Jean married a soldier, Hester continued as Director of the Admiralty Secretarial Unit, and Cholmondeley remained with MI5 until 1952, later married, and traveled widely. Major William Martin's identity was revealed to be Glyndwr Michael in 1997 when an epitaph, with his real name, was added to Martin's headstone in Spain.

'Operation Mincemeat' is a solid enough WWII drama that moves along at a steady pace, has some stoic stiff upper lip performances from Firth, Macfadyen and Isaacs especially, and the production values setting the look and feel of early 1940's London is spot on. For a period piece centred firmly on espionage, intrigue, subterfuge and oneupmanship this films ticks all of those boxes, but is let down by the romantic triangle that Montagu, Cholmondeley and Jean Leslie find themselves in and from which no one comes out the victor. It is interesting to see all the early nods to James Bond as penned by Flynn's Ian Fleming, including Q Branch, M and a wrist watch with a built in buzz saw, and it was he who, after all, came up with the plan to stash a corpse full of 'top secret intelligence' to foil the Germans into thinking one thing while the Allies were doing something completely different - a stroke of genius that could have been lifted straight from one of his novels. Certainly worth the price of your cinema ticket, made all the more worthwhile knowing that this film is based on an extraordinary true story of deception and those unknown soldiers left at home to fight another kind of war from the shadows, but who nonetheless contributed to such a remarkable outcome to the war effort.

'Operation Mincemeat' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

RADIOACTIVE : Tuesday 10th November 2020.

'RADIOACTIVE' which I saw earlier in the week is an M Rated British biographical film Directed by Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian born French graphic novelist, cartoonist, illustrator, children's book author and film maker whose previous feature film outings take in 2007's 'Persepolis', 2011's 'Chicken with Plums' and 2014's 'The Voices'. This film is based on the 2010's graphic novel 'Radioactive : Marie & Pierre Curie - A Tale of Love and Fallout' by Lauren Redniss, and saw its World Premier screening as the Closing Night film at TIFF back in September 2019, before its scheduled release due in March this year, which was subsequently cancelled due to COVID-19 and released digitally in mid-June, and in cinemas around Australia a couple of weeks ago now. The film has garnered mixed or average Reviews so far and taken just over US$2.5M at the Box Office.

The film opens up with an ageing Marie Curie (Rosamund Pike) collapsing in her Paris laboratory in 1934. Her lab assistants come to her aid and she is rushed to hospital. While being stretchered in she remembers her life going back to 1893 when she was studying physics, chemistry and mathematics at the University of Paris, France. Gabriel Lippmann (Simon Russell Beale) presided over the faculty and held the purse strings and the head strong and outspoken Curie often collided with him over funding for her research, for the interference in her laboratory, and probably because she was female in very much a mans world. She is ousted from her laboratory by Lippmann and his panel of colleagues, and so is forced to find alternative accommodation and a place to conduct her experiments and research. 

One evening by chance she literally stumbles into Pierre Curie (Sam Riley). In time the pair develop a close relationship, after Pierre invites Marie to share his own laboratory space which she agrees to albeit reluctantly, saying that she prefers to work alone without the distraction of others, or sharing the fruits of her experiments. However, she soon relents and in time the couple are married, ultimately having two children - Irene (Indica Watson as the six year old, and then Anya Taylor-Joy as the grown woman) and Eve, the younger sister (Cara Bossom).

Soon afterwards Marie announces her discovery of two new elements - radium and polonium and with it radioactivity which completely revolutionises physics and chemistry. Within a couple of years radium, which glows bright green, is being used in a number of commercial applications from matches, to toothpaste and playing cards. Pierre even takes Marie to a seance (under the guise that it's science after all) where radium is used to attempt to contact the dead, but Marie disapproves of spiritualism and any notion of a life after this one following the death of her mother in Poland

In 1903 Pierre is nominated to receive the Nobel Prize for Physics in Stockholm, and insists that it be shared in joint names with his wife Marie. On the occasion of his visit to Stockholm just before he is about to make his acceptance speech he coughs up blood, having developed a hacking cough in the lead up to the ceremony which he has been unable to shake off. Upon returning home Marie has become agitated that he attended without her (she didn't want to go) and accepted the prize in his own right (which he did not), and the pair fight. Later having made up, Pierre is becoming increasingly sick with anaemia as a result of his ongoing research into radioactivity, and one night, in the rain, while crossing the busy Rue Dauphine he slips on the cobble stones and falls under a heavy horse drawn cart. He is killed outright instantly when one of the wheels runs over his head, fracturing his skull. It was the 19th April 1906 and Pierre was 46 years of age. 

Marie is devastated by the death of her Pierre. She originally dismissed the idea that her elements are toxic, even though ever increasing numbers of people were dying from serious health conditions after exposure to radium. Depressed, she begins an affair with her colleague Paul Langevin (Aneurin Barnard). She is subsequently invited by Lippmann to apply for Pierre's Professorship at the Sorbonne, and tells the gathered panel that she will not apply and that if they choose to give her the position she will gladly accept on the basis that her work speaks for itself and that this should be their key decision making factor. She gets the job needless to say and is the first female Professor at the University of Paris. At around the same time the French nationalist press reports on the details of her affair with Langevin, including personal and intimate letters sent between the two. She is harassed in the street and at home by xenophobic mobs due to her Polish origins, with the press taunting her as a Jewish home wrecker even though Langevin had been estranged from his wife during their affair. Langevin caves into the pressure and goes back to his wife ending his year long relationship with Marie.

In 1911 she is nominated to receive the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. She defies the Committee's instructions not to travel to Stockholm because of the bad press surrounding her affair, and is greeted enthusiastically by the local dignitaries and audience in attendance at the awards ceremony, many of whom are women. 

In 1914, with the outbreak of the World War, her daughter Irene convinces her to run X-Ray units from the back of ambulances on the Western Front in order to determine whether or not amputation is needed for wounded soldiers. Marie offers to fund the X-Ray diagnostic units by selling her gold Nobel Prize medals to the government, but they reject this notion and reluctantly agree to put up the funding following a very persuasive argument. 

Irene begins dating Frederic Joliot (Edward Davis), but Marie disapproves of their relationship because they have been researching artificial radioactivity and warns Irene not to see him or research radioactivity anymore because it is so life threateningly dangerous. Although she refuses to obey her, they go to the Western Front together to run the X-Ray machine.

Throughout the film we see scenes of the negative impact of her discoveries upon humanity. First off there is the dropping of the two Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 effectively ending WWII, then there is experimental external beam radiotherapy on a young lad in a hospital in Cleveland in 1956, then a nuclear bomb test in the Nevada desert in 1961, and finally the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster. Fast forwarding to 1934 we see Marie in hospital coming round with visions of her cradled in her dying mothers arms in Poland as a young child, and the events played out in flash-forwards to those negative impacts. Pierre arrives to collect her and they leave the hospital together. She died on 4th July 1934 from aplastic anaemia from exposure to radiation in the course of her scientific research and in the course of her radiological work at field hospitals during WWI. She was 66 years of age. 

As the closing credits roll, we learn that the Curies' X-Ray unit saved over a million lives during the war, that their research would be used to create radiotherapy, and that the Joliot-Curies would discover artificial radioactivity in 1935 for which they would both receive the Nobel Prize for Chemistry that year. 

Having read the very mixed Reviews of 'Radioactive', I went into my local multiplex with my expectations set none too highly. That said, I was pleasantly surprised when the final credits rolled. Rosamund Pike gives a compelling performance as Marie Curie with her staunchly opinionated view of the world, her ahead of her time feminist beliefs and her outspoken fearless and highly educated manner with just about anyone and everyone. Sam Riley is equally on fine form here as the foil to Pike's Marie - as the put upon scientist who cannot believe he's bagged a woman more intelligent, more educated and perhaps more committed to science than he is, and is prepared to stand up for what she believes in. Whilst Marjane Satrapi has crafted a film that looks great and on the surface does contain many elements that played out in the real lives of the Curie's, there are some obvious moments of poetic license and dramatic effect that dilute the impact of the film and relegate it from what it truly could have been to what it simply is. In the final analysis the film serves as an important reminder of what a great scientist Marie Curie was, and how the influence of her groundbreaking work still radiates to this day. 

'Radioactive' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

    

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

THE DEATH OF STALIN : Tuesday 24th April 2018.

'THE DEATH OF STALIN' which I finally got around to viewing this week is a highly acclaimed political satire Directed by the Scottish satirist, Writer, Producer and Director Armando Iannucci based on the French graphic novel 'La mort de Staline' by Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin. Starring an ensemble cast, the film was shown at TIFF back in early September last year, went on release in the UK in late October, the US in early March, and here in Australia at the end of March. The film has taken US$16M at the Box Office to date, and has picked up eleven award wins and eighteen nominations including two BAFTA nods, and has been banned in Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan . . . . can't think why!

It is 1953 and the film starts off with a Mozart piano recital by Maria Yudina (Olga Kurylenko) which is broadcast live over Russian Radio from Moscow. Mid way through the recital Comrade Andreyev (Paddy Considine) who is overseeing the live broadcast of the concert, receives a phone call from a mystery speaker asking him to call Joseph Stalin in seventeen minutes, exactly. Unable to contain himself, partly out of fear and partly out of excitement, seventeen minutes clicks over and the numbers are dialled. Stalin asks for a recording of the concert just as it ends, which will be picked up later that evening from the studio. Needless to say the broadcast was not recorded, so in a mad panic Andreyev orders the gathered and and already rapidly departing guests to be reseated, while he reassembles the accompanying orchestra and Maria Yudina. But many of the audience have already left the building, the Conductor has passed out, and Maria wants nothing of it. So Andreyev brings in passersby off the street to replicate the acoustics, hurriedly replaces the Conductor with another of some repute, and bribes the disgruntled lead pianist, and restarts the whole shebang for the purposes of a single recording for one man . . . but of course, Stalin is no ordinary man!

As the recording is handed over, Maria Yudina slips a hand written note in the sleeve of the record telling Stalin he has ruined the country, that he is a Dictator and that she wishes him dead. As Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin) reads it in his country residence, he is stricken and collapses from a cerebral hemorrhage. He is discovered the next day, laying where he fell and the members of the Central Committee are alerted. The first to arrive are NKVD (the interior ministry for the Soviet Union) head Lavrentiy Beria (Simon Russell Beale), who discovers Yudina's note, and Deputy General Secretary Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor). As Malenkov panics given that he is now elevated to Acting General Secretary, Beria guides him to take leadership, hoping to use him as a puppet for his own ends. Then the Moscow Party Leader Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi) arrives with the rest of the Committee, except for Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov (Michael Palin) whom Stalin had added to his hit list only the night before.

The Committee together call upon a number of Doctors to confirm whether Stalin is in fact dead, and if so, the cause of death. However, because Stalin had all the top class Doctors in Moscow killed, the Committee is forced to seek out any third rate Doctors they could find that were still alive. In the meantime Beria shuts down Moscow, orders the NKVD to take over the city's security duties from the Soviet Army, and replaces Stalin's enemy hit list with his own, granting Molotov a reprieve in the process. With Stalin on his death bed overseen by the Committee, the Doctors and Stalin's composed daughter Svetlana (Andrea Riseborough), and mentally unstable son Vasily (Rupert Friend), the ailing Dictator comes around momentarily, before finally popping his clogs. At which point the Committee members with Svetlana and Vasily, hurry back to Moscow as the NKVD pillage through Stalin's country residence, ransack the place and execute its staff and any onlookers.

Later Khrushchev goes to Molotov's home and attempts to secure his support, only to be visited by Beria at the same time seeking Molotov's loyalty by releasing his wife Polina from prison. Malenkov is in due course named Head of Government although his strings are being pulled by a controlling Beria. At the inaugural Committee Meeting in the wake of Stalin's death, Beria sidelines Khrushchev by suggesting he should take charge of Stalin's funeral much to Khrushchev's disdain but he is over-ruled by a unanimous vote (all votes are carried unanimously BTW, again largely out of fear for the possible repercussions of disagreeing). Beria also puts forward many of the liberal reforms which Khrushchev had planned to introduce, as his own ideas winning him further support from the Committee.

While Stalin's body lies in state for three days in the Hall of Columns, Beria's proposals swing into action including the release of many political prisoners, and the restrictions imposed on the Russian Orthodox Church - both of which earn Beria further support from the masses. Meanwhile, Field Marshall Georgy Zhukov (Jason Isaacs) arrives on the scene demanding answers as to why his Soviet Army troops have been sidelined, relieved of their duties and confined to barracks. Khrushchev then quietly approaches Zhukov, who agrees overwhelmingly to provide the Army's support in a coup to overthrow Beria, but only if the whole Committee concurs.

To undermine Beria's growing popularity, Khrushchev orders the trains back into Moscow so enabling thousands of mourners to travel into the city and to pay their last respects to their former leader by filing past his open casket, around which the Committee stand guard of honour. As he planned, the NKVD guards surrounding the Hall firing on the crowd, killing some fifteen hundred innocents. 

The Committee suggests laying the blame at lower ranking NKVD officers as Beria feels that blame associated with his security services will tarnish his reputation. In retaliation, he angrily threatens the Committee with incriminating documented evidence he has on them all. Molotov is the next to fall in line offering his secret support to overthrow Beria, but again, only if the entire Committee agree to it, including Malenkov. 

The day of Stalin's funeral arrives. Khrushchev tells the Committee and Zhukov that he has Malenkov's support, although at this point this is not true. Zhukov and his men overwhelm the NKVD guarding Beria and arrest him. Khrushchev convinces Malenkov into signing the papers for Beria's trial, which he does reluctantly calling that Beria deserves a fair trial. The entire Politburo find Beria guilty of treason, sexual assault, mass murder and countless rapes in a trumped up on the spot court that descends into a screaming match as Beria accuses the Politburo of hypocrisy. Beria is shot dead in the head by one of Zhukov's men, and petrol is immediately poured over the body and it is ignited where he fell. The ashes are later scattered in the wind. 

In the closing scene and some years later when Khrushchev is now the Leader of the Soviet Union (from 1958 until 1964) he is in attendance with his wife at a concert given by the pianist Maria Yudina, while future leader Leonid Brezhnev (who later succeeds him) watches over his shoulder.

There is no doubt that Iannucci has crafted a fine example of dark historical political satire at its most comically absurd and ludicrous. He has assembled a great cast too that pull off their characters dialogue and actions without missing a beat, and all delivered without a single Russian accent in sight (hearing Stalin speak with an east London accent, or Zhukov with a Merseyside accent only adds to the incongruous comedic effect). The jockeying for position by those within Stalin's inner circle immediately following his death, is both farcical and revealing in the depths that those power hungry schemesters will sink to in order to get ahead, and to stay alive, with Beria being the worst of a bad bunch and rotten to the core. Whilst this is a dark satire, it is based loosely on the political machinations of the totalitarian state at the time where paranoia, fear, famine, poverty, labour camps and widespread executions were the status quo. Naturally, these are hardly topics that would inspire mirth and merriment, but maybe that is Iannucci's end game here - to poke fun at a regime that is a blot on the historical political landscape and for some, still within living memory. And this he does, save for the final ten minutes when the comedy falls away to a more serious tone and the main protagonist gets his comeuppance in no uncertain terms. Worth a look for sure to see a fine assembled cast playing it straight, keeping it grounded and making it believable with farcical and at times frightening consequences.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-