Red Joan My Review- 6:10
I think Trevor Nunn should stick to being an English theatre director. Nunn has been the Artistic Director for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre, and, currently, the Theatre Royal, Haymarket.
Alas these qualifications don't automatically transfer well to Cinema direction and in my opinion this is a very average film .
It has a great talented cast including Judi Dench , who as usual gives stature to any movie and a good performance as the aged Joan Stanley who is accused of espionage and giving secret information to Russia that would assist them in being able to process their own Atomic bomb.
Judi Dench' role is important in this story but not the major role ,that is played by Sophie Cookson as young Joan in flashbacks of how this fanciful tale , very loosely based on the true story of Melita Sirnis or Melita Norwood as she was known as when she was unmasked as a spy in 1999.
I've posted a little of the real life story of Melita or Red Joan as I suspected it would have made a much better film .
Perhaps the novel it's based by Jennie Rooney is better but the screenplay written by Lindsay Shapiro didn't impress me at all.
The character Red Joan is based on was a Communist , never migrated to Australia and her stated reasons for her betrayal were entirely different to the films story, she thought Communism was the preferred ideal.
As the information below states this film is another example of taking a story and altering the true facts and padding it with unnecessary fiction and cliches like the obligatory Gay blackmail exposure theme to enable Joan and her husbands escape to Australia.
Like most movies today the credits state that it's based on a true story in this case it just didn't ring true to me and I think if it had had better direction (example Morten Tildum The Imitation Game) and a better believable script eg( Graham Moore & Andrew Hodges Imitation Game) it may have worked.
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From 1932, Sirnis worked as a secretary with the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association. Towards the end of 1935, she married Hilary Nussbaum, who was of Russian descent (he later changed his name to Norwood), a chemistry teacher, teachers' trades union official, and lifelong communist. After the Independent Labour Party (ILP), of which she had become a member earlier in the decade, splintered in 1936, Melita Norwood joined the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). The UK authorities were not aware of her party affiliation until very much later. The previous year, she was recommended to the NKVD (forerunner of the KGB) by Andrew Rothstein, a leading member of the CPGB, and became a full agent in 1937. In the same year, Norwood and her husband purchased a semi-detached house in the south London suburb of Bexleyheath, where they led an apparently unremarkable life together, and where she would live until she was 90.
A committed communist, Norwood said she had gained no material profit from her actions. In a statement Norwood read at the time of her exposure, she said: "I did what I did, not to make money, but to help prevent the defeat of a new system which had, at great cost, given ordinary people food and fares which they could afford, a good education and a health service." While she said she did not generally "agree with spying against one's country", she had hoped her actions would help "Russia to keep abreast of Britain, America and Germany".
I think Trevor Nunn should stick to being an English theatre director. Nunn has been the Artistic Director for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre, and, currently, the Theatre Royal, Haymarket.
Alas these qualifications don't automatically transfer well to Cinema direction and in my opinion this is a very average film .
It has a great talented cast including Judi Dench , who as usual gives stature to any movie and a good performance as the aged Joan Stanley who is accused of espionage and giving secret information to Russia that would assist them in being able to process their own Atomic bomb.
Judi Dench' role is important in this story but not the major role ,that is played by Sophie Cookson as young Joan in flashbacks of how this fanciful tale , very loosely based on the true story of Melita Sirnis or Melita Norwood as she was known as when she was unmasked as a spy in 1999.
I've posted a little of the real life story of Melita or Red Joan as I suspected it would have made a much better film .
Perhaps the novel it's based by Jennie Rooney is better but the screenplay written by Lindsay Shapiro didn't impress me at all.
The character Red Joan is based on was a Communist , never migrated to Australia and her stated reasons for her betrayal were entirely different to the films story, she thought Communism was the preferred ideal.
As the information below states this film is another example of taking a story and altering the true facts and padding it with unnecessary fiction and cliches like the obligatory Gay blackmail exposure theme to enable Joan and her husbands escape to Australia.
Like most movies today the credits state that it's based on a true story in this case it just didn't ring true to me and I think if it had had better direction (example Morten Tildum The Imitation Game) and a better believable script eg( Graham Moore & Andrew Hodges Imitation Game) it may have worked.
...................................................................................................
From 1932, Sirnis worked as a secretary with the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association. Towards the end of 1935, she married Hilary Nussbaum, who was of Russian descent (he later changed his name to Norwood), a chemistry teacher, teachers' trades union official, and lifelong communist. After the Independent Labour Party (ILP), of which she had become a member earlier in the decade, splintered in 1936, Melita Norwood joined the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). The UK authorities were not aware of her party affiliation until very much later. The previous year, she was recommended to the NKVD (forerunner of the KGB) by Andrew Rothstein, a leading member of the CPGB, and became a full agent in 1937. In the same year, Norwood and her husband purchased a semi-detached house in the south London suburb of Bexleyheath, where they led an apparently unremarkable life together, and where she would live until she was 90.
A committed communist, Norwood said she had gained no material profit from her actions. In a statement Norwood read at the time of her exposure, she said: "I did what I did, not to make money, but to help prevent the defeat of a new system which had, at great cost, given ordinary people food and fares which they could afford, a good education and a health service." While she said she did not generally "agree with spying against one's country", she had hoped her actions would help "Russia to keep abreast of Britain, America and Germany".