We are accustomed to want spectacle from our movies today. But Steven Soderbergh has never been interested in giving the public what they’re accustomed to. Even his blockbuster movies are not devised to follow Hollywood trends or capitalize on demand. He has had a fantastic run of giving the public what they did not know they wanted. He has also had a career of making exactly what he wants to make. These two careers unfold (and always have) concurrently with his “one for them, one for me” philosophy. Black Bag is “one for me.” And that’s what made it exceed my expectations.
We know spy movies, right? Tom Cruise jumps onto airplanes. Daniel Craig unleashes the hidden weapons in his sports car. Brad and Angelina destroy their home with a massive shootout. Somehow, I doubt the life of a spy includes too many of those things.
And we know a happy film marriage, right? One person comforts the other as they sob. Smiles are flung across the kitchen endlessly. And they always fall into intense lovemaking with alarming passion.
Black Bag is a spy movie about a fiercely devoted couple that reaches into none of those clichés. In true Soderbergh style, the tone is tightly controlled. Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender wear quietly expensive clothes as the throw subtly elegant dinner parties in their minimalist mansion. When suspicion is thrown on one of them, the other patiently investigates. When world crises hang in the balance, they have calm direct conversations.
Neither the espionage nor the marriage ever approaches spectacle or outward passion. It’s all much more interesting than that. Fassbender administers polygraph tests. Blanchett makes businesslike requests. Their pillow talk is straightforward and economic.
Both are very top-tier actors, and we never doubt their intense love and devotion. Just as we never doubt the danger at stake though exactly one explosion takes place in the film. The measured and efficient way that the two balance a relationship filled with untellable secrets and passion that doesn’t need to be extravagantly displayed is compelling and comforting. This is one of the healthiest marriages put on screen. But it is always in equilibrium and tandem, even when the partners are testing each other and those around them.
The most thrilling scenes in this film are bookending dinner parties where the hosts introduce simple games. Every relationship between any two characters is compelling and contradictory. What makes this tale rattle along is the brilliantly written interactions between the six main characters as we see them in all different pairings. In these relationships, context is everything.
This is also an exploration of lies and integrity. When you accept that everyone has classified information to protect, do you take that opportunity to do things which you know you can hide with two little words: “black bag”?
The film may misunderstand religion, but it knows human nature. And it handles it in a tantalizingly matter of fact way.
(Look for fun allusions to Sunset Boulevard and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?)