Official Secrets movie review, Homeland is where you were born and raised; Is it the piece of land that was your ancestors’ or your homeland, of which you are a citizen? So, when it comes to treason, to whom will you answer?
Is it to the government officials who were elected by the votes of the people for a certain period of time and who shape the laws according to their own interests, or to the people themselves? Or could you have committed a crime and betrayed the country with a single action you have done in your 30 years of life? Were some people declared traitors because they defended the oppressed of the people, not the rich?
So, did Katharine Gun (whose surname is actually Gün, because of her Turkish husband), who works as a translator at the British intelligence agency GCHQ, betray her homeland while trying to protect her people and her country’s reputation from a war whose legitimacy is questionable – in her own way? Or did he put a damper on government officials who were trying to get away with their wrong decisions?
We started with a paragraph with many questions; Because the movie Official Secret, adapted from Katharine Gun’s real life story, drops all these questions into the audience’s lap like a bomb and leaves the stage. The production, in which we watched Gavin Hood (X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009); Ender’s Game (2013)), the director of Eye In Sky, which we can call another war drama, in the admiral’s chair again, is, as usual, a biographical book (“The Spy”). “Who Tried to Stop a War: Katharine Gun and the Secret Plot to Sanction the Iraq Invasion”.
If we talk about the core story for those who do not know, in the days before the US invasion of Iraq, before the UN Security Council meetings where the invasion was discussed and the process would be voted on, an internal memorandum fell into the e-mails of British intelligence agency GCHQ officer Katharine Gun; as well as other employees in the same unit. But the intelligence work requested from his unit – as an order – is part of the NSA spy operation, which the USA wants to blackmail the UN delegates.
The employees in the unit also realize that there is a ‘disability’ in this job, but they continue their work without anyone questioning it too much. Except for one person: Yes, Katharine Gun. Gun, who leaked this scandalous intelligence order to the press through a friend, confesses without hiding that the leak came from him; But he did this knowingly and willingly to expose the dirty face of war to the public and to protect the British people. It’s not unfair; Because the fact that the British government is a tool in the hands of the Oval Office rather than a partnership with the USA for a war whose legitimacy is questioned will become more evident day by day.
The film moves at an up-and-down pace from the moment the information is first leaked; In fact, Gun’s confession comes so early that you think the scenario has lost all its mystery. However, director Gavin Hood takes the second half of the film out of a personal ‘conscientious tension’ axis and uses it to show how the British government cheated after the Iraq invasion – when weapons of mass destruction were never found.
While the side stories supporting the main frame question how free the free press remains or whether it is pro-government and corrupt, another element of tension in the story comes from Gun’s wife Yaşar, a Turkish citizen of Kurdish origin; Because Yaşar is both Kurdish and Muslim! Moreover, his presence in the UK depends on the renewal of his residence permit. The government, which declared war on the Gun family, of course does not miss this opportunity and falls on Yaşar, who has immigrant status, like a real nightmare.
In her acting, Keira Knightley manages to bring the main character to the big screen as a living person; But, it’s not the Oscar-worthy Knightley performance we were hoping for. The most prominent performance of the film, apart from Knightley, comes from Ralph Fiennes as Ben Emmerson, who acts as Gun’s lawyer in the second part of the film. Fiennes’s determined and stubborn character ultimately ensures Katharine Gun’s acquittal.
In short, Official Secrets is a movie that can be watched in the biographical crime and drama category, and even pushes the audience to question the questions it releases on the first Friday of the year. Who was the real traitor in the last instance?
Official Secrets (2019)
Directed by: Gavin Hood
Starring: Keira Knightley, Matt Smith, Matthew Goode, Ralph Fiennes, Indira Varma, Jeremy Northam, Katherine Kelly, Tamsin Greig, Hattie Morahan, Jack Farthing
Screenplay by: Gregory Bernstein, Sara Bernstein
Production Design by: Simon Rogers
Cinematogrphy by: Florian Hoffmeister
Film Editing by: Megan Gill
Costume Design by: Claire Finlay
Set Decoration by: David Morison
Art Direction by: Ben Clements, Bill Crutcher, Andy Watson
Music by: Paul Hepker, Mark Kilian
MPAA Rating: R for language.
Distributor: IFC Films
Release Date: August 30, 2019
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