Search - The Russia House on DVD

The Turbid Glass Curtain

Mr. Cairene | Cairo, Egypt | 01/02/2001

(3 out of 5 stars)

""Crowds are good, if you're moving. Open spaces are good. Talk in the street, if you have to. Never talk in a car or a hotel room, except for the benefit of their microphones" says the British agent Ned (James Fox) to Barley Blair(Sean Connery), a somewhat reluctant participant in the supposedly anesthetized espionage scene circa Glasnost. Blair is a civilian, a publisher in love with Russia and its writers. He had joined them in what is affectionately named the "writer's village" somewhere in this excitingly open Russia, where he and this select group of boozy intellectuals had discussed saving the world between lunch and dinner. His idealism was noted. An intermediary, Katya (Michelle Pfieffer) sends him a book, authored by a man known as Dante (as in Dante's Inferno) that relegates the Soviet Nuclear threat, and consequently the arms race with the United States to the toilet. British Intelligence get hold of the book before Blare does. And so begins another complex chapter in John Le Carre's quest to eliminate the mythic nobility of espionage, and magnify those who are caught in the crossfire. Dante, played superbly by German actor Klaus Maria Brandauer, must have read quite a few of Le Carre's novels, he doesn't trust Western intelligence or intelligence people at all for that matter. To him, they are all "gray men" and in a moving scene, he recounts how gray men, never to be heard from again apprehended and killed his father. He knows that Blair will be working for British Intelligence, but he will deal only with a civilian, a "Joe agent". Meanwhile, Katya, extremely beautiful in a haggard Russian sort of way develops a liking to the rusty charmer Blair. Katya had been Dante's lover back in their student days. And a quietly touching love triangle develops as a counterpoint to the all the arcane goings on.The Russia House comes with an exceptional filmmaking pedigree. The schizophrenic director Fred Schepisi was on his talented side coming off the powerful A Cry in the Dark. He furnishes Le Carre's distinctive world with the pre-requisite amount of oak lined rooms, sedate men smoking, talking, drinking hard liquor in ice filled high-quality glassware, while the scent of betrayal hovers. The script by English playwright Tom Stoppard wisely avoids suffocating the film with unsolicited suspense scenes to makes the film more commercial or accessible. This is a talky, demanding, plot heavy film. The whole thing is laced with a memorable, jazzy Jerry Goldsmith score that perfectly underscores the photogenic Lisbon, Leningrad and Moscow (where most of the film is set.) Several stellar performances are to be found among the supporting cast. Namely Roy Schieder (himself a veteran of such spy films as Marathon Man) as the foul mouthed CIA attaché, who in some scenes is called upon to explain the labyrinthine plot. On the British side, in genius bit of casting, director Ken Russell plays Walter, the eccentric, cynical "character", who seems disgusted to have to explain the mechanics and the subtleties to all those cold war rookies. These characters more then makes up for the absence of Smiley, who Le Carre veterans would remember as the looming figure whose sinister fingerprints are mostly felt in his absence. The film's problems are more central. As Blair, Connery gives what is easily one his best performances. But he is still Sean Connery, sometimes shaken, never stirred. He is supposed to be equal parts charmer and a washout, but when he describes himself as a "walking unmade bed", you can't help but smile. This being Le Carre territory, you shouldn't. The performance pales in comparison to Richard Burton's haunting Alec Leamus in Martin Ritt's incomparable 1965 masterpiece The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. I couldn't help but think that an actor like Albert Finney would have brought much needed pathos to the part. The pathos, or lack thereof is part of the film's larger problem. For all what is at stake in the end, The Russia House doesn't have that palpable sense of doom that permeated the 1965 film. The enemy here are those who would still profit from the cold war. They are fought in elegant offices on the Western side of things, not grim debriefing rooms behind the iron curtain. This probably makes the film more relevant. It also makes for far less compelling drama."