A spy movie, drama, whodunnit, and psychological thriller all rolled into one. Recipe for cinematic disaster? No chance. “Black Bag” does it all with room to spare.
The new film from pioneering director Steven Soderbergh is a 90-minute ride that melds familiar themes with a fictional tapestry of current events to create a polished piece that, interestingly, still leaves you questioning in the end.
Built on the premise of married English covert agents who are struck with a moment of mutual distrust, the narrative is angular from the onset. Viewers are immediately presented with the prospect of a mole, and the search for the odd man—or woman—out centers on wife Kathryn (Cate Blanchett) and pathologically honest husband George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender).
The story is quickly complicated, however, by a ring of associates, including a computer ops specialist (Marisa Abela), two male agents (Tom Burke and Regé-Jean Page), and a psychiatrist, Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris).
To call “Black Bag” a psychological thriller is oddly literal, as the therapy sessions of the various characters play a central role in developing a theory of guilt and suspicion.
Another unconventional element, given the genre, is its pro-marriage and pro-virtue messaging, wherein infidelity and dishonesty are seen as taboo to the extreme. Instead of the pain of sin, however, the upshot is directly tied to various shades of material demise.
Make no mistake, though, Christian ideology is no stranger to the arc of “Black Bag,” which features as a major theme the faith of Dr. Vaughan, a Black Catholic. Ironically, though, she is hardly the moral model of the film, which ties in a web of (non-explicit) sexual liaisons and intersecting connivery between warring secret agents.
Government influence and the corrupting nature of state power also play roles as tertiary characters of their own, prompting thorny questions of collateral damage, patriotism, secrecy, and the greater good.
Stitching together the film, though, is the seemingly impenetrable bond between Kathryn and George, whom “Black Bag” almost begs the viewer to doubt, but to no avail. Even the antagonist, whom the film masterfully conceals throughout, plays the spousal devotion to their advantage.
Old-fashioned though it may be, the story never feels juvenile or simplistic—though it teeters on the edge at points. Do the good guys always win in real life? Does the bond between husband and wife triumph over evil as a simple matter of fact? Ultimately, the film doesn’t trifle with philosophy. Instead, it relies on what we all want to believe in: that operating in good faith is of intrinsic value.
Even so, right down to the last scene I found myself trusting no one, perhaps because of Hollywood conditioning to valorize villainy and wait patiently for altruists to be destroyed by their apparent weakness. “Black Bag,” while rejecting such inversions, is still more complicated than one might expect.
In a relatively short runtime, the film weaves together love, hate, instability, morality, and the metaphysical in a way that challenges one to consider what many in modern society won’t. As one character in the film describes it, “flagrant monogamy,” a lost art, is apparently quite the magic bullet.
Nate Tinner-Williams is co-founder and editor of Black Catholic Messenger.
