At the beginning of The Courier, we are told that the film is based on real events. It's always an interesting choice. I suppose the motivation is to give the audience a little help in willingly suspending their disbelief. But does it make the film better? There's a type of person, and the film producers know this, who would say yes. They would claim an interest in history that supersedes the pleasure of enjoying a story. Hence why, sometimes, filmmakers claim 'true story' falsely, as with the film Fargo. I must confess to feeling hoodwinked by Margaret Forster's Diary of an Ordinary Woman when I realised that it was not based on a 'real' person like the text claimed. Of course, it poses the question, what is real? Greville Wynne was a real salesman in the 1960s, recruited by MI6 to travel to Russia and bring home state secrets relating to the Soviet nuclear programme. His source was Oleg Penkovsky, also a 'real' person. But did events transpire quite like they do in the film? Was there really a female CIA officer called Emily Donovan and if so, was she as beautiful as Rachel Brosnahan who plays Donovan? Well, more of the spectacular cast later but the point is that the film seems to trade on this relationship between truth and lies and how identities are shaped in a landscape where everybody is a potential spy and nobody is telling the truth.
The unusual brilliance of The Courier, for me, was to be found in its humility; the way it unfolds by such a prosaic and linear means of storytelling. Writer, Tom O'Connor does not seek to confound and it was a sort of relief but also very clever because the film builds to such a powerful but in some ways, unexpected, climax. Equally, The Courier is a period piece that does not scream that it is a period piece. No lingering shots of antiquated telephones or mid-century decor which is so de rigeur in historic films of today but just steady story-telling with an appropriately drab back drop. Of course, part of the impact of this story is to be found in the ordinariness of Greville Wynne. He really was an ordinary salesman who played golf. He was an ordinary, mildly adulterous husband and an ordinary moderately detached father. He was an ordinary man who did an extraordinary thing.
Wynne is played by Benedict Cumberbatch. Initially, I thought, isn't Benedict Cumberbatch always a bit Benedict Cumberbatch? With his peculiarly distinctive face, isn't he always, at the very least, a bit Sherlock? But as the film opened and we witness Greville Wynne drinking his way through his average life, quietly swallowing down the ubiquitous disillusion of mid-life, I realised how wrong I was. BC had this character nailed, with his barely disguised Estuary vowels and nervous little laugh. As he travels backwards and forwards to Moscow, he begins to understand some of the gravity of what he is undertaking. He meets with Penkovsky who is played by the mercurial Merab Ninidze. I could look at Ninidze's face for a long time. It is everything that Cumberbatch's face isn't and that is why the casting was so brilliant, they formed a sort of yin and yan of comradely loyalty that evolved before our eyes and held us as the inevitable terror ensued. Sorry to spoil the ending for you but both men are captured and tortured in a hell-hole of a Soviet prison. It should have been expected but because of the understated opening of the first half of the film, somehow, it was breath-taking to find that there wasn't going to be a conventional happy ending.
But this was where the film really took off. Wynne is kept in solitary confinement and tortured for two years. The point of torture is to strip us of our identities, to reduce us until there is nothing left. And when we are nothing, we will happily sign anything that Soviet officials put in front of us. Except, Wynne will not relinquish the one truth that gives his identity its essence. He will not forsake Penkovsky. Of course, he also wanted to return home to his wife and child but the scene that brought the whole film together was when the Russians throw Wynne and Penkovsky together after months of torture in the hope that they will proceed to incriminate and denounce each other. Both actors have lost weight for the final scenes; Cumberbatch was unrecognisably gaunt. Of course they will not denounce each other. Wynne tells Penkovsky that the Russians removed their missiles from Cuba and thereby backed down from increased hostilities with the USA. The preposterous claim is that Penkovsky's bravery has saved the world from nuclear war. But it is not preposterous in the context of this scene. Penkovsky's days are clearly numbered but Wynne makes him aware that his sacrifice has paid off. Unforgettable cinema!
