Black Bag
Black Bag begins with Michael Fassbender’s back to the camera in an unblinking tracking shot from city street to subterranean club, and it is immediately clear that we are in the hands of a master. In this case, Steven Soderbergh, in his second theatrical release of the year, after the ghost story Presence. Soderbergh’s camera graces Fassbender’s George, an intelligence agent arriving for a meeting with Gustaf Skarsgård, who is passing along a list of names — suspected traitors involved in stealing Severus, a top-secret malware that destabilizes nuclear facilities and could lead to international disaster. Between drags on his vape, Skarsgård’s Philip is complaining about his wife’s bitter reaction to discovering his infidelity. It’s apparently all too easy to cheat and lie in their line of work, but George is better known for his “flagrant monogamy” with fellow intelligence agent Kathryn, played by Cate Blanchett. In a chocolate-brown wig, all lioness physicality, Blanchett is more than just a sight to behold — she’s a fierce, enchanting woman who matches George’s cunning, and so he’s made his life a shrine to her. “I can feel when you’re watching me,” she purrs while getting ready one evening, George rapt over her shoulder. “Sorry,” he says, almost embarrassed by his own wanting. “I like it,” she smirks. Their relationship is enviable to the vipers around them, until Kathryn’s name appears on Philip’s list. She is under suspicion, and George might have to sacrifice his marriage to maintain his sterling reputation at work.
Black Bag is electrifying, with Soderbergh operating in what the twitter-verse calls God mode — portraying highly competent people attempting to outwit one another in beautiful clothes, the light practically bending to their beauty and banter. It’s pure star power, delicious without an ounce of anything superfluous. The kind of production that reorients our gazes and opens our hearts to possibilities in life and cinema. Black Bag is a tremendous example that a film need not be making an explicit political point or obsessed with the political dimensions of its narrative to be a worthwhile film. A work can rise to this present moment by offering us rapture. This, too, is what movies are meant to accomplish.
Black Bag may be an espionage movie, but the screenplay by David Koepp isn’t propelled by spycraft. Instead, the spycraft is propelled by the emotional and lust-fueled entanglements of its cast. Case in point, the dinner party George and Kathryn host at their glorious home; he tells Kathryn that one of the attendees is the traitor he’s chasing and he hopes to fumigate them here (though he stops short of revealing to Kathryn that she is a suspect, too). There’s Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris), a Catholic psychiatrist who clears the agents for duty, and who is dating James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page), a recently promoted (thanks to George’s recommendation) colonel. There’s the louse Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke), who was passed over for the position James got, and the younger, sharp-tongued Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela). Picture a film where six James Bonds all sit at the same table, all trying to outmatch the others.
Each performance is pitch-perfect. Burke is gregarious, his charm carrying a touch of sliminess. Regé-Jean Page has venom in his smile. But it’s Harris and Abela who impressed me most. When Harris’s Zoe tells Kathryn that an “aroma of hostility wafts in ahead of you” — so perfectly delivered that the words could bleed a stone dry — I cackled with delight. And Marisa Abela, I’d seen you before but I wasn’t familiar with your game. You’re bold and bruising, with a mask-off ferocity that brings out the vitality of any scene partner. It’s a pure shot of joy watching these actors play off one another in Soderbergh’s barbed yet mesmerizing world of chrome and charisma, where bodies are forever in motion toward their next hit of pleasure or violence, all encased in a spiky, felicitous score by David Holmes (who worked with Soderbergh on the Ocean’s films).
As cinematographer, Soderbergh is slick but never sterile. Even with his limited color palette, every frame thrums with life, every object in the world feels cleverly incorporated. There’s a sexual dynamism to it all, even while the film lacks obvious sex scenes, because Soderbergh has made the trappings of monogamy downright erotic. George and Kathryn are devoted to each other, and each other only. Whether George is letting his glasses fog up while cooking a decadent meal or interrogating his co-workers, there’s a sense that he wastes not a shred of energy that could otherwise be put toward Kathryn. As the film continues, each character is mired in a tense bramble of their own making trying to track down Severus and protect themselves. But for George and Kathryn, their marriage is on the line, their colleagues attempting to manipulate the couple into a rivalry that redirects that potent energy.
What ultimately cinches the dynamics of Black Bag is the chemistry between Fassbender and Blanchett. Individually, they are refined, glamorous. Together, they’re intimidatingly, pornographically so. It’s more than compounded beauty and charisma, though. This is a matter of complementary craft; of two great listeners and communicators bringing rapture to every gesture. She brings warmth to his rigidity, his gaze renders her even more awe-inspiring. A great star is both enlivening and aspirational, gracefully human and superhuman. In this way, Fassbender and Blanchett run circles around any younger set of stars recently anointed into Hollywood.
