TWO QUITE DIFFERENT MURDER MYSTERIES REVIEWED
By accident I watched two murder mystery movies in quick succession. They were quite different and yet addressed the same slippery concerns we’re all wrestling with at present. Also, they were vivid examples of how culture changes universal genres to suit the tastes and assumptions of their country.
One was “London Spy,”(2015) which is on Netflix only until tomorrow *3/31). I suppose it’s not popular taste. The author, Tom Rob Smith, began with the real-life death of Gareth Williams, a Welsh mathematician and analyst of Russian intel computer hacks and invasions. Williams was found dead in a padlocked gym bag and certain parties tried to discredit him as a pervert who was into various sexual kinks. The McGuffin is the idea that the young male victim in “London Spy” who is like Williams hid his major insight on a cylinder that can only be opened with a code; this one is very small but powerful enough to bring down international spy webs.
Starting with this basic idea, Smith creates a subtle, poetic, intellectual meditation explored by the finest of BBC actors. There are five chapters in the series. They explore two major English “hang ups,” one about intellectual brilliance and the other about gay men. Instead of using the gimmick of a reporter or detective, Smith begins with a male sex worker who falls in love with the brilliant spy and is entrusted with the cylinder that can undo the Russian schemes.
Added is an old “queen” who loves the sex worker and who is capable of reflecting on and guiding what happens. Also pushing along the mystery is the concept of “mother” and “family”, though the fathers don’t seem involved. (There is an old and discredited idea that overwhelming mothers create gay sons.) This is an opportunity to cast Charlotte Rampling to personify the notion that brilliance can be created by raising a child a certain way and that espionage is a good reason to do it. Ben Wishaw is the appealing sex worker who manages to seem innocent. The secret he knows is that the spy who was killed was a virgin, hardly an experienced kinkster as portrayed by authorities.
English culture in many ways is like a waterfowl, so serenely floating on the water while under the surface all the time the feet are paddling madly. One of the legendary male upper crust “clubs”, notorious for wealth as control, is used for one scene. Outdoors it’s always raining, but nevertheless much happens on long walks along the river. Key to the plot is a “playroom” equipped with all the usual implements and guises, curiously pristine. In fact, there is little blood or violence in this long reflection.
In contrast, “The Take” (AKA “Bastille Day”, 2016) is a wild romp through blood, explosions, shoot-outs, and the traditional pursuit across slippery Paris roofs. This time the pair involved are a rogue black CIA agent, excessive in the tradition of troubled law officers, and a pickpocket, not always portrayed as this appealing. (Richard Madden) As a reviewer remarks, the things this detective does would be detestable except that he’s played by Idris Elba who is forgiven everything. Anyway, it’s all French farce and if he were in Gotham, he would be Batman. Paris has always loved black people. There’s a pretty girl because in France there’s always a pretty girl
France, home of two romantic underground movements because of two World Wars, is much more drastic and dynamic than English plots, but the McGuffin is again a modern cyber object, this time a thumb drive containing the bookkeeping of an entire bank vault. Much more convenient than figuring out how to transport gold bars or even stacks of currency. I don’t know why no one figured it out earlier. Wait! That’s how the international mafia works — over the internet! And the spying as well!
The opportunity for farce — people rushing in and out of rooms, seeking culprits they just missed — is unlimited. The spies from America — Elba’s character is supposed to be American — include at least five entities, France has its own clutch of jealous bumblers and corrupt leaders, and Russia and its mafia almost always manages to get its nose in, even if the issue is only big money rather than state secrets. In Russia they are the same thing.
Both films are ambivalent about Americans. The subscript is that movies sell big to American audiences, who always have to feel important, and much financing comes from American sources. Often blacks function as Americans who are not “ugly” in the sense of that book about boorish and stupid travelers, but even in American they can be active moral commenters. American film makers sometimes pick up on this.
Genres seem to be humanly universal, with murder mysteries as a major category, along with romance. But each culture has its own assumptions about who the players are and what they are up to, rendering death and profit along the way according to the “rules” of that society. This is the dimension that the marketing algorithms of businesses like Netflix never manage to capture. They pick up subject matter and reviewer scores, but can’t capture the quality of the dialogue, the pace of the plot, or the skill of the actors. Pop features are simple and repetitious enough to manage, but not high literary work.
In a time as complex and often mysterious as ours when seemingly innocent things wipe out whole generations and call into question things as apparently real as nations, one might want quiet and good company to consider it all — the English way — or to turn to French action with explosions and risky flights from both authorities and enemies. Pickpockets and sex workers become almost respectable in their knowledge and resourcefulness. What has been illegal becomes the key to successful law and order.
