The movie
Steven Spielberg continues to be a master in the art of filmmaking. And his passion for historical cinema offers us a new great film. Bridge of Spies is not dizzying, as Saving Private Ryan o Munichnor excessively political, such as Friendship o Lincoln. It is a human story, where the ambition for justice and doing the right thing is the guide on which the narrative is built.
The change of setting from New York to Berlin is really great. From one moment to the next, the film goes from being a thriller from American lawyers to a disturbing spy adventure, where the character of James Donovan, an insurance lawyer brilliantly played by Tom Hanks, is at the center of the action and becomes, unintentionally, the hero of the story.
It is a visually majestic film, where the photography and shots are very well thought out and executed, in the best Spielberg style. It is also a great treatise on character development. It is also interesting to note the way in which the director manages to interweave the stories of the subjects and families involved in the plot.
Bridge of Spies focuses on the true story, although logically somewhat versioned, of the Cold War exchange between a Soviet spy captured in the United States and a U.S. military pilot shot down in Russian territory.
The director begins the narrative long before the exchange is posed. He does so during the legal proceedings of the alleged Soviet Union spy in a New York court of law. It is here that the moral qualities of Hanks' character are established and where the first human consequences of what this lawyer felt that in justice he should do are raised.
Once the story changes continent and reaches Europe, the narrative becomes exciting. The scenery becomes another protagonist, while the action accelerates and manages to keep the viewer in suspense, because it is not certain until the last moment that things are going to turn out well.
With this film Spielberg relates historical moments. It fully addresses the arguments present in the first part of the Cold War. The nuclear tension, the work of the spies and the political positions clearly established in each of the blocks.
Bridge of Spies is a film, in short, in which director and actor are at their artistic best and which ends up being one of the best stories of the year.
