Tea at Trianon: The Courier (2020)

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, August 15, 2021

The Courier (2020)

Oleg Penkovsky: I'm sorry it has to be you. But Greville, it has to be you.~ from The Courier (2020)

This movie is worth watching for anyone interested in the Cold War and Communism. It got some bad reviews from the far Left, no wonder. It is amazing it is being shown on Prime. From The Cap Times:

Greville Wynne is a great name for a spy, but the British businessman’s moniker is the only thing that suits him for the espionage world. As played by Benedict Cumberbatch in “The Courier,” Wynne is a typical middle-class salesman, a little boring and doughy, content to live a comfortable, unremarkable life sitting in his favorite chair, smoking his pipe and reading spy novels.
And yet, during the Cold War, Wynne was a crucial conduit for a Russian spy smuggling valuable intelligence to the West. His story is chronicled in “The Courier,” an engrossing and thoughtful real-life spy drama (think “Bridge of Spies” more than “No Time To Die”) that wisely emphasizes how ordinary Wynne was amid extraordinary circumstances.
The operation starts in 1960 when Oleg Penkowsky (Merab Ninidze), a high-ranking Soviet official, grows alarmed at how fast Premier Nikita “We will bury you” Khrushchev is accelerating the arms race with the United States. He reaches out to the American Embassy in Moscow with an offer to smuggle sensitive documents out of Russia, but in the middle of an arms race, American agent Emily Donovan (Rachel Brosnahan) knows she can’t send an American into Russia.
Instead, she and her British counterparts recruit Wynne, a salesman who does a lot of business in Eastern Europe, to expand his business into Moscow, and begin bringing packages home from Penkowsky. Wynne is terrified, but believes in serving his country.
He begins traveling back and forth behind the Iron Curtain, and the film is full of scenes of Wynne and Penkowsky exchanging documents in dark alleys, nervously looking over their shoulders. Their mission, and the secrets their share, end up sparking a friendship between the two spies. While the first half of “The Courier” is rather slow on the espionage front, the bond that develops between these two middle-aged men from vastly different worlds is quite affecting. (Read more.)

From The Decider:

Under the direction of a CIA agent (Rachel Brosnahan) and an MI6 agent (Angus Wright), Wynne travels to the Soviet Union. Ostensibly he’s there on business, but really he’s there to meet with a Russian traitor and fellow spy, Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze). It turns out Wynne is quite good at espionage, and, eventually, he gets roped into becoming a “courier”—he smuggles intelligence across the border via his frequent “business” trips to the USSR. He starts working out to look the part, much to his wife’s (Jessie Buckley) confusion and suspicion.
From his very first scene, Cumberbatch is on fire, injecting humor and nuance into even the most unremarkable dialogue. The petulant way he whines, “No! Tell them I’m in my chair!” when his wife fields a call from his work made me laugh out loud, as did the dorky sing-song way he said “Hellooooo?” when he picked up the receiver. It’s good he gets those moments of levity in when he does, because, as you might expect, much of the film is far more intense. It’s not a spoiler to say that Wynne is forced to endure deplorable conditions to remain a patriot to his country, and Cumberbatch handles his tough-to-watch scenes beautifully. And admittedly I’m a sucker for the “protagonist gets emotional while watching the ballet/opera/symphony” trope, but Cumberbatch just does it so well. My heart broke, and yours will too. (Read more.)