![]() ![]() The stranger-in-a-strange land atmosphere isn’t spooky, it’s entrancing. It’s unashamedly an outsiders’ view-we don’t see much misery-but it does justice to our sense of the rejuvenation in Russia. “The Russia House” is the first American non-co-production to be shot mostly in the Soviet Union and Schepisi and cinematographer Ian Baker provide one intoxicating vista after another they’re swooning right along with Barley. And, set loose in Moscow and Leningrad, Barley feels like he’s adrift in a minaret-studded, fairy-tale dreamscape. It is only as a spy that he comes into his own, because it confirms his own wild-eyed romantic notions of himself. He’s a publisher with the soul of an artist. Barley seemed miscast as a book publisher-he’s too out-sized and physical and unruminative. We can see how practicing espionage has coalesced his disparate temperaments. The joke here is that Barley’s undercover operation brings out the exhibitionist in him he relishes the notion that his ardor is being broadcast, mulled over, dissected.īarley also turns out to be a first-rate spy. But he’s so exhilarated by his awakening passion that he doesn’t really mind being bugged. Barley, wired for sound, is being monitored his intimacies are fodder for the spymasters’ dossier. The early scenes in which Barley finagles information from Katya while trying to seduce her carry a comic charge. With the ravishing Katya as intermediary, Barley finds himself in a dual role: He’s both spy and romancer, often at the same time. He wants to clear the way for peace.īut when the manuscript is intercepted by the British secret service, Barley is coaxed into returning to Russia to reconnect with Dante, whom he innocently met earlier as a guest at a Soviet Writers’ Union retreat, in order to verify Dante’s veracity. Dante’s hope, if he is to be believed, is that Barley will publish the text and thereby persuade the West that a nuclear build-up is irrelevant. In “The Russia House” (at selected theaters), Barley, via a Moscow book publisher named Katya (a radiant Michelle Pfeiffer), is sent a top-secret manuscript by a dissident physicist, code name Dante (Klaus Maria Brandauer, in a splendid cameo), which purports to expose Russia’s extensive military weaknesses. (The spies are impeccably played by, among others, James Fox, Roy Scheider, Michael Kitchen, John Mahoney and Ken Russell, who turns out to be as wigged-out an actor as he is a director.) They justify their existence by acting out the same old tired covert scenarios their missions into “enemy” territory have the flavor of grand-scale pranks. Without an active Cold War to fight anymore, the British and American spies and their Soviet counterparts are engaged in kind of formal shadow play. This unmooring was the subtext of Le Carre’s novel and it’s true to an even greater degree of the movie.įred Schepisi, who directed from a densely witty script by Tom Stoppard, understands what’s at stake. Paranoia is integral to the spy genre but, in the glasnost era, the genre has rapidly become unmoored. Nothing is what it seems no one is who they are supposed to be. Most spy movies, including many of the best ones, are slinky, dark-toned affairs. The spy game isn’t a self-effacing experience for him on the contrary, it turns out to be self- enhancing. ![]() As a newly minted spook, Barley doesn’t sport the shifty-eyed anonymity common to his tribe. He may be a malcontent but he’s a startlingly exuberant malcontent. Connery’s Barley Blair isn’t your usual stuffy bookish type he’s boozy and blustery and he likes to tootle on his saxophone. In “The Russia House,” based on the 1988 John le Carre novel, Sean Connery plays a London publisher who is coerced into becoming a spy.
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