Red Joan (3/10)

by Tony Medley

Runtime 108 minutes.

R.

This is an astonishingly sympathetic roman à clef of the story of Melita Norwood who was a Russian agent in London for 40 years. While it is factual in what she did, it is 100% rubbish in her motives.

The film starts with old Joan (Judi Dench, a much-loved actress cast obviously to inspire sympathy), the pseudonym for Melita, being interrogated and arrested being accused as a spy. It flashes back and forth between old Joan and young Joan (Sophie Cookson) who is shown as being blindingly naïve but also apparently book smart.

Directed by Trevor Nunn, the movie shows that young Joan is coaxed into spying for Russia by her lover, Leo (Tom hughes), and friend, Sonya (Tereza Srbova), oh, so reluctantly. It tries to make your heart bleed for old Joan as she draws a fallacy of relevance between the Stalinist Communists in the Soviet Union who killed more of their own people in the ‘30s than Hitler did in WWII, and Great Britain and the United States who were fighting the malevolent Axis powers. While the movie shows that she was drawn in by her lover and friend almost involuntarily as young Joan and then justifies her actions by saying she wanted both sides to have the bomb so it would never be used, that’s poppycock.

I’ve tried to find out what Nunn’s politics are, unsuccessfully, but if this movie is an example, he’s not much different from the Brits who refused to condemn the traitors Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. You know, the old British leftist anthem by E.M. Forster, who wrote in 1938, “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” But Joan probably did as much, if not more, damage than the three of them, the Rosenbergs, and Alger Hiss combined.

In fact, though, despite the soft soap that Nunn and screenwriter Lindsay Shapero (based on Jennie Rooney’s novel) peddle here, Melita was a committed socialist/communist at heart and she was brought up in it. Her parents were active socialists and her father published articles by Lenin and Trotsky. Unlike the movie’s portrayal of Joan, Melita joined the Communist Party in 1936 after marrying in 1935.

Also contrasting Melita, Joan is single throughout this film until after WWII finished. She is lovable and innocent and Nunn would have you believe that she is certainly not responsible for the horrible things she does because they were mostly done for love and out of naiveté.

I guess they changed her name so that they could manipulate what she did and try to leave the message that her actions are commendable because she did it all for peace. But at the end they admit that it’s the story of Melita, so what this movie is, is inherently dishonest. It whitewashes a woman who was either a fool or a despicable traitor, or both. She should have been thrown in jail, if not executed, instead of becoming the subject of a fawning movie.

It’s hard for me to rate this. It is very well done; the acting is superb; it moves quickly. If you don’t know anything about what really happened, you feel sympathetic for poor ol’ Joan.

But it’s partisan hokum. As an entertainment, it’s high quality. As history, it’s a disgraceful use of art as a weapon, which is right out of the Communist playbook.  Even if a movie is entertaining and technically well made, if it’s touting a lie it's not praiseworthy.