Spy Sorge - spoilers

John Dougill dougill at mbox.kyoto-inet.or.jp
Tue Jun 24 19:32:35 EDT 2003


I wonder if anyone else has seen Spy Sorge?  I was shocked at how bad this
expensive film was in parts.  Some of the reviews suggested that it was
overlong and uninspired: that's true.  But they hadn't prepared me for just
how embarrassing some of the film was.  What I don't understand is how come
the studio allowed it to pass as it is....

For one thing this was clearly a film with a huge budget and location
shooting all over the place with expensive sets.  Huge amounts of money.
Yet there were places where the digital effects were so false and artificial
that they distracted from involvement in the film and actually made one want
to laugh at the amateurishness.  One scene I remember clearly had what
looked like a painting stuck on a window to recreate a period building next
door.  Spectacularly bad special effect.  And many of the backdrops dripped
with as much inauthenticity as Hollywood films from the 1950s - oh, look
planes flying past digitally recreated scenery.  It's a damning indictment
of Japanese film if that is the best they can come up with...  "This
country's film industry has been reduced to almost nothing. The only hits we
make seem to be animated ones," producer Masaru Koibuchi told me on the set
in Moji. "I see this film as a way to link our present with our great film
culture of the past. (Article in the Japan Times
http://homepage2.nifty.com/uesugihayato/ispy.htm)

Indeed, much of the film looked like the work of an amateur rather than the
final grand finale of a respected professional.  What on earth was the point
of choosing a Scottish actor to play a German master spy?  Simply to pander
to the US so they don't have to read subtitles?  These days even Hollywood
gets native Indians to play native Indians in their own accents.  It's not
as if there aren't any German actors in the world.

Some of the music choice was downright embarrassing.  Having the
Marseillaise when the French appear, the American anthem when US troops
arrive, and the Internationale when Communists were shown is hardly a sign
of sophistication.  And bizarrely this overlong film about a Communist in
World War Two finishes with a trite Beatles song, as if that would somehow
make everyone feel nice at the end.

The script was also downright embarrassing in parts.  When master spy Sorge
is going to be hung, he wonders if his faith in communism has been all in
vain.  Absurdly he is comforted by his Japanese captor who tells him that
Moscow has beaten Hitler so faith in communism is not misplaced.  About as
likely a piece of dialogue as Buster Keaton smiling...   And what was the
point of splicing films of the end of communism into Sorge's execution - to
show his activity was pointless?  Then what was the point of the film?  And
though Sorge's story was shown at great length, there was a far more
interesting story in the Japanese spy Ozaki... what was his motivation?  It
seemed he had far more to lose, and far less connection or knowledge of
communism.  At one point he even appeared not to know where the information
he was providing was going - 'You don't want to know,' Sorge tells him,
(despite having mentioned to him earlier in the film that it was for
Moscow).

By the end of the film I was angry at having forked out money for such a
badly edited film.  An 'earnest three hours of exposition with wooden
acting,' said the International Herald Tribune.  I wish the reviewers in
Japan had been more honest.  I'd be interested to hear from reactions from
others who have seen it.....





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