Based on the Gregorian calendar and the rush of the post-Emmys wind that could be mistaken for cold fronts, the Oscars season is drawing nigh. Or is it already here? I don’t know; I don’t remember the concept of the seven days that supposedly make up a week. Even more pressingly, I’m not sure who’s supposed to be a what or where is why this time around. What can we be excited about? With the continuous setbacks of release dates, nominations will be either be barren (Trolls 2 for Best Animation?) or a White Christmas snowstorm on VOD. I feel the weight of doing nothing and knowing nothing about films getting heavier and sadder. Maybe Scorsese, I imagine in gray sweatpants, is feeling the same.
Lydia Dean Pilcher’s historically reflective A Call to Spy fits the annual niche of the inspired WWII film, a genre that can minimally guarantee a nomination spot filler. Here, we are in 1941, and as the German army blazes down Europe and starts to close in on the English Channel, Churchill orders the country’s Special Operations Executive to start hiring women as spies. Intelligence officer Vera Atkins (Stana Katic), eager to prove that women are capable, recruits randos Virginia Hall (Sarah Megan Thomas, also writer) and Noor Inayat Khan (Radhika Apte). There are supposedly more women (we find that there are at least thirty), but we only follow Hall and Khan into their training with their male counterparts, and then their eventual fielding and wireless operating. When choosing them, Atkins’ requirement seemed to be, as she says to another official, “Would you suspect this woman to be a spy?”
That’s a legitimate question.
To preface, I think it’s easy to enjoy a WWII film, especially if you live in a country that was on the winning side (although not so easy now if your country is currently losing at everything else). The heroes and villains have already been delineated. The outcome, in which good triumphs, is permanently etched into any and all the finales. Sprinkle in the bouts of violence and sacrifices to make it engaging to the human emotion. And that’s a WWII film. All of the fun other stuff, like the tearful depth of Scarlett Johannsson’s role in Jojo Rabbit or the rollercoaster POV of 1917, can make it Oscars-worthy, no problem. But for the most part, watching WWII flicks is like the historical genre of the recent Spider-Man regurgitative saga. We know what’s going to happen, but heck, sure.
So to make an unwatchable WWII film, it’d have to be weirdly insensitive, inaccurate propaganda, or…boring. The problem with A Call to Spy is that if 1917 was Space Mountain, this would be a flat-gravelled tractor ride from the parking lot to the entrance of a barn, inserted with a short detour to see some goats cattily bleat at each other. Despite the relatively outstanding performance from Thomas (which would normally not stick out to me in other situations, but I think in my moments of dissonance, I kinda forgot that she was acting, if that makes sense), A Call to Spy rolls on without tone differentiation between tense scenes or expository dialogue. Words are being said, shouted, and whispered with such a lack of personality that one would think that a high school textbook was used as the script. Truthfully, the dullness that can engulf a tale of espionage should be an international criminal offense.
It’s hard to be tough on a movie that is earnest in its storytelling. Women becoming spies is interesting. Atkins being an influence for the Bond series’ Miss Moneypenny is interesting. Hall’s physical disability (amputated leg due to gangrene) and Khan’s pacifism make for interesting tidbits that can contribute to a better whole. But one must recognize the skill to captivate, rather than reenact. And so here marks some notches in this timeless season of the year: Tenet took some of the first few risks at the box office in August, Mulan took a strange risk in the pay-per-view method in September, and A Call to Spy took the first risks to be the stale Oscar bait in early October.
A Call to Spy
2020
dir. Lydia Dean Pilcher
123 min
Available for digital rental Friday, October 2
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