Bridge of Spies and the Value of Life

What is a human person worth? And in a related question, what is the shape of a human’s personhood? My wife and I sat down this weekend and watched Steven Spielberg’s latest film, Bridge of Spies. The story of a prisoner swap between the Soviet Union and the United States at the height of the cold war. The main character in the movie, James Donovan played by Tom Hanks, struggles to broker the complicated and tense negations between the two parties. Donovan is an insurance lawyer, turned defense lawyer, turned diplomat, turned high stakes negotiator.  Often times Hank’s character is unaware or unsure of both sides real goals and motives. The questions that plague Donovan and the murky political waters he has to navigate are intoned by the darkened settings and lighting in the film. Just as with Schindler’s List  the color palette or lack thereof highlights the difficulty and uncertainty of the film’s protagonist.

What struck me as I watched this film was the way in which the value of human life was front and center in the film. Is an aging spy worth one or two Americans? Is the American serviceman worth more or the same as the American graduate student?  Is the value of a spy in what they know or in something else entirely? Their service? Their uniqueness as a human being? Donovan throughout this film is set in opposition to his own government. The CIA agents handling him constantly press him to compromise his values. The CIA has made up its mind, the graduate student is not worth the trouble of saving, the pilot is.  Donovan disagrees and insists on both Americans. In the end, the film is less about the spies as it is about the man who stands between the opposing parties who value objectives and secrets above and beyond the individual.       

It struck me soon after watching this film, just how much Spielberg wrestles with this question of human value in his other films.  In his latter movies, such as Saving Private Ryan, Amistad, Schindler’s List, and now Bridge of Spies, Spielberg takes this question on in a   myriad of different ways. Can the life of one soldier and his potential value to his family out weigh the lives of his fellow soldiers? Oscar Schindler’s entire character ark starts from using individuals to make him wealthy toward coming to view nothing more valuable then an individual human life.  Bridge of Spies is likely to be Spielberg’s least preachy example concerning the value of human life.  In all three movies mentioned above,the theme is expressed directly.  For example, Oscar Schindler, laments “I could have gotten one more.” And Itzhak Stern (played by Ben Kingsley) holds the list of Jews Oscar is going to absconds with and says, “This list is life.”  

Bridge of Spies on the other hand  plays it oblique. The result is a film that engrosses the viewer, allowing the individual to soak in the film’s message.  Rather then being confronted by a message (such as the girl in the red dress in Schindler’s List) one is left enjoying the character of Donovan, feeling more acutely his struggles to value and promote human life.  In many ways it is one of Spielberg’s  more enjoyable and better films. 

Authentic Beauty

As a husband I am pretty confident that every man in America who has a girlfriend or a wife is on the hook every Valentine's day for a gift.  It is on the men in America to provide our better halves with a token on our love and affection.  Consider if you will how your other half might react to you if you chose to go to Hobby Lobby and while there purchase a bouquet of plastic roses.  Or if you take your significant other to the local Sonic Drive-in for Valentine’s dinner. Does anyone doubt that it would be taken as a less than an authentic expression of  a man’s devotion?  

    For our wives or girlfriends only the real, authentic rose would do. It is in the real stuff, the rose that feels, smells, and looks like a rose that will communicate to her our genuine authentic feelings toward her.  No matter how well meaning the bouquet of fake flowers is, no matter how sincere your feelings toward your spouse or girlfriend is, providing something fraudulent is going to insult her. 

  The same goes for the world of art and beauty---authenticity is a necessary component to faithful expression of beauty and feeling.  There is no more obvious place where this is on display then when it comes to Christian film making.  I feel very strongly that one of the reasons Christian films so often fail as a matter of story telling is that they are inauthentic, with inauthentic characters.  Madeline L’Engle the author of  A Wrinkle in Time stated “Non-fiction may write what it true but fiction is about truth.” Christian films put sentiment, and strict adherence to what maybe called a “good conduct code” ahead of presenting something first and foremost that is real and genuine. 

Allow me to give you two examples of what I mean by genuiness. One of my favorite novels is called Glittering Images by Susan Howatch, by the way it is another book I would recommend you place on your to-read list.  It is the story of a scholar-priest, Charles Asworth, set in the 1930’s, Dr. Charles is sent to spy on the bishop of the fictional city of StarBridge by the ArchBishop of Canterbury.  Dr. Asworth soon discovers a scandal, a sexual Ménage à trois between the bishop, his personal assistant, and the bishop’s wife.  But his discovery brings about in this scholar-priest his own psychological break as he confronts the sexual secrets of his own family.  The political shenanigans and jealousy of the Archbishop, the sexual failings of the bishop of Starbridge and the mental breakdown of the main character would all be non starting points in any novel on the shelves of Life Way Christian bookstore. However, Glittering Images is a powerful cautionary tale that secrets in our lives have a way of getting out no matter how desperate we are to hide them. 

The second example is probably more familiar to us, Steven Spielberg’s  Schindler’s List.  This movie justifiably received the Oscars it did, including best picture, because it took an authentic and unflinching look at the moral ambiguity and dehumanizing actions of the holocaust.  Can you imagine how that film would have been if it had stuck to the no nudity, no violence, no moral complexities that most of our Christian films take? The brokenness of the characters, both good and bad reveal something truthful about the gospel no Christian film would dare tackle. 

In both examples it is the darkness, depravity, and honesty that help communicate something truthful.  Genuine characters, situations and reactions to events are analogous to real roses on Valentines day. The more real these elements of your art the the more that they help communicate your respect and even love for the audience of your art as an artist who claims the name of Christ.