Black Bag — Steven Soderbergh

Someone inside one of the UK’s intelligence agencies has stolen a device that could lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and sold it to the enemy, but that’s of almost secondary concern to all the bed-hopping and backstabbing between romantic partners in Steven Soderbergh’s byzantine but playful thriller, Black Bag. Working from a stripped down yet dizzying screenplay from David Koepp (writer of recent Soderbergh films Presence and Kimi), Soderbergh is using spycraft as a way of exploring honesty and trust in relationships, even arguing that the two can (perhaps even should) remain mutually exclusive. The film also allows the famously cerebral director to scratch his deconstructionist itch, making something that nods at le Carré and Fleming and features the expected wet work and cloak-and-dagger operations while saving its real fireworks for parlor games and trying to catch your significant other in a seemingly meaningless lie. The sizzle is in the strategizing and the release in watching someone step right into a well-orchestrated snare.

Taking place over the course of an especially eventful week, we’re introduced to spymaster George (Michael Fassbender, reuniting with his Haywire director), who is one of the most trusted intelligence officers at National Cyber Security Centre. George alone has been tasked to root out a mole at NCSC who has allowed a flash drive containing malware code-named “Severus” to fall into the hands of a Russian extremist currently under closely monitored house arrest in Eastern Europe. George is given a list of five names, all NCSC employees all in his social circle, which somewhat awkwardly also includes George’s wife Kathryn (Cate Blanchett, another Soderbergh veteran, although good luck remembering 2006’s The Good German). Rather than dragging everyone in for a polygraph, George elects to throw an intimate dinner party, only partially sharing his actual intentions with Kathryn — the film employs its title throughout as a brusque catchall for any subject that can’t be elaborated upon out of national security concerns — beyond warning her that he dosed one of the evening’s courses with a potent truth serum. Arriving at his home expecting dry conversation and an exquisite meal (amongst his many other talents, George is a gourmand) are four of George and Kathryn’s colleagues who, in an allowable bit of contrivance, have all coupled up. There’s the recently promoted, ruthless careerist James (Regé-Jean Page), who is involved with NCSC’s resident Psychiatrist Zoe (Naomie Harris). And then there’s bon vivant Freddie (Tom Burke), who lost the promotion to James, accompanied by his much younger girlfriend Clarissa (Marisa Abela). Gathered around George and Kathryn’s table, with the unflappable George steering the conversation into some uncomfortably personal places —  and aided in no small part by the DZM5-laced dinner — it doesn’t take long for the sparks to fly, as though we were in an Edward Albee play. Before the night is over, embarrassing peccadilloes are shared and someone gets a steak knife stabbed through their hand.

The dinner party is both a prelude to and a microcosm of how George likes to operate. Gifted in skullduggery and renowned for his emotional detachment — we learn George exposed his own father’s adultery, which eventually led to the older man killing himself — George runs a shadow op on his four coworkers, hoping to catch them in his web. At the same time, the possibility that Kathryn is the traitor claws at the back of his skull, particularly as damning circumstantial evidence begins to pile up. George must confront the fact that his sexy and mysterious wife is lying to him about her comings and goings; is it merely all in a day’s work or is she obscuring something more troubling that even spouses can’t confide in one another? And if the latter is true, where does George’s devotion to King and country fall in his personal hierarchy when it comes to protecting the woman he loves at all costs? Further, if others know that George’s loyalty to Kathryn is his weakness, then how might bad actors weaponize that against him? Might they even position George as a potential fall guy whose love for Kathryn would see him aid and abet some light treason?

Black Bag really is a marriage (funny, that) of two very specific kinds of films. On the one hand, it’s consciously invoking the mole-hunt genre, and more specifically Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, most recently brought to the screen by Tomas Alfredson in 2011. As in that film, there is a recessive, almost ashen quality to the lead performance, with Fassbender projecting a placid exterior while whatever might be transpiring under the surface remains a closely-guarded secret (meanwhile, Black Bag is actively courting comparisons to Tinker Tailor, outfitting its main character with the thick, owlish glasses favored by both Alec Guinness and Gary Oldman in their respective adaptations, while also having him share a first name with George Smiley). More intriguing, though, Soderbergh seems to be taking considerable inspiration from the acerbic yet frothy relationship-dramas of the sort directed by Mike Nichols and Alan Rudolph. It quickly becomes apparent that nearly everyone here is two-timing their partners, in some instances with other members of the group. And it becomes equally apparent that sneaking around and lying for a living lends itself to cheating in some fairly insidious ways (Burke’s Freddie gives one of the most forceful denials of having an affair you’re likely to see on screen, only for Fassbender to instantly cut him down to size by rattling off an itinerary of dates and places of his most recent trysts). In Black Bag, infidelity is analogous with espionage; the very attributes which make the characters such effective field agents — paranoia, distrust, cold-blooded logic — are what make them such terrible lovers. The film’s cosmic joke, then, is that despite spending all day with their noses in highly-sensitive secrets, the characters are utterly blind to their partners fooling around behind their backs.

All of which makes the dynamic between George and Kathryn such a fascinating and, dare it be said, “grown up” example of a modern marriage. The characters have fallen into a practiced routine where all of the following is taken as a given: A.) that their significant other is lying to them about at least some significant part of their lives, B.) that they are being surreptitiously observed by their spouse some part of every day, and that neither of those things matter because, C.) when it counts, they will have each other’s back no matter what. It’s a refreshingly pragmatic and quietly stirring view of relationships in an unlikely milieu. In the film’s telling, the keys to happiness are to accept your lover’s transgressions, don’t question their motives, and be secure in your certainty that they would walk through fire for you and you for them (the characters even recognize the kink in being spied on). As Black Bag’s plot spins out into a series of double- and triple-crosses — as is Soderbergh’s want, the film favors economy over clarity and who’s doing what to whom and why tends to pass in a flippant blur, tacitly acknowledging none of this stuff actually matters — Fassbender and Blanchett’s performances become the film’s North Star, lending a moral clarity to the endless quagmire (it also helps that both actors, despite playing their roles as cold fish, have incredible chemistry).