Trust in me, trust in me

I don’t watch tv, I haven’t for years, so it’s been intriguing to consider what I might recommend to you in terms of what to watch. Rather than tv I turned to films, replaying movies in my mind in search of ones that I’d enjoyed over the last five to ten years. Nothing really hit home, nothing that led to another film to recommend. At least not until I got to one of my favourite films, 2009’s The International with Clive Owen and Naomi Watts. Taking that as my start point I looked backwards for other films about trust, cover-ups and corruption. The doors opened to a rich vein of films going back to the 1960s. I kept out of going even further back as I had found enough recommendations by then.

Most of the films I’m recommending have a sense of grit to them. There is duplicity, and there is a lead character, or characters, pursuing and exposing ‘the truth’, and there are some other issues to which I’ll refer as we progress.

In The International our two protagonists are searching for evidence of wrong doing in a quiet boardroom of suited men. Their target is an international bank that may be dealing in arms, funding wars and de-stabilising governments. As the bank goes about its business Salinger and Whitman, the characters played by Owen and Watts, are in an increasingly dangerous pursuit of truths.

There is a brief, and beautiful, exchange about the truth, between Naomi Watts Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Eleanor Whitman, and her boss New York DA Arnie, played by James Rebhorn, an exchange that could be transposed into any of the films here:

“We are just trying to get to the truth!” says Whitman.

"I get it! But what you need to remember is that there's what people want to hear, there's what people want to believe, there's everything else, THEN there's the truth!”

“And since when is that OK? I can't even believe you are saying this to me! The truth means responsibility Arnie!”

“Exactly! Which is why everyone dreads it!”

And that last line captures another truth, one that protagonists often have to face – often people don’t like ‘truths’ especially if they are in conflict with what those people want.

As with all my recommendations there is tension, intrigue and chases and some depth of character development. There are also varying degrees of violence. I am not a fan of excess or gory violence. My feeling is that you can tell a perfectly good story with just enough violence to serve a purpose. You can see this in The Bourne Identity [2002]. Bourne is a character searching for the truth of who he is, and, on his journey to that he comes to realise something of the machinations of the CIA and his part in it. Of all the Bourne movies I still prefer the first, and then 2012’s The Bourne Legacy. An interesting difference between the two is that The Bourne Legacy takes us into a different realm of conditioning these assassins. In The Bourne Identity the implication is that Jason Bourne’s conditioning is predominantly psychological and often brutal. In The Bourne Legacy Jeremy Renner’s protagonist Aaron Cross is conditioned in part through pharmaceutical enhancement. More on this later.

Years ago, before the films came out, I had the pleasure of reading Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Identity [1980]. It’s a interest of mine to read the novel of a film, if I can, something that started when I chose to read Moonraker by Ian Fleming. Reading the Bond books, all of them, was a revelation which led me to see the movies in a new light. I watching the movies for light entertainment, at best. The only one that got close to the tenor of the books was the first with Daniel Craig, 2006’s Casino Royale, although I didn’t really understand the floating house scene in Venice or all the double dealing. For me the books have more intrigue and are generally so much darker than the movies. This reminds me of another literary connection: I read, and enjoyed, various Eric van Lustbader novels, starting with The Ninja [1980]. It is van Lustbader who took over writing the Bourne series from Ludlum, and it is he who penned The Bourne Legacy in 2004.

Back to recommendations about films concerning trust and corruption. I could take you down the line of The Fugitive [1993] with Harrison Ford seeking out the truth behind his wife’s murder and the falsification of hospital records. It is definitely a film about trust, and although I like the movie it doesn’t have the grit of others. I suppose I also prefer slightly understated protagonists, and I wonder about the character development of the antagonist played by Jeroen Krabbe. The Fugitive lead me to consider Enemy of the State [1998], which I might also suggest. In it Will Smith plays Robert Dean, an attorney who accidentally receives evidence of a political assassination. Like The Fugitive Enemy of the State is a good film, with a great twist at the end. It definitely has the themes I’m considering, I just felt that Will Smith’s character isn’t quite nailed enough. You’ll perhaps notice this issue of character in both these films if you explore and compare them. Are the leads essentially strong characters where more and more of that strength is revealed as the plot progresses, or are they a bit too light for you to have confidence that they would act as they do? In Enemy of the State there is almost a recognition of this question when Gene Hackman’s character Brill says of Dean:

“If you live another day I will be very impressed.”

And, lo and behold, Dean does live to see the next day. Are we surprised? No, not because of the character's strength, but because the film is centred on them and there is never a suggestion that they won't survive.

After that little diversion, let’s get you back on track. Allow me to take you in this direction instead – consider The Conversation [1974]. It stars Gene Hackman in the role of Harry Caul, a character that some suggest reappears as Brill in Enemy of the State. It is, however, a wholly darker and more paranoid story. Set back in the 1970s it’s focus is about surveillance and technology, a focus that resonates with concerns so pertinent today. The Conversation is an extreme example of paranoia where the trust that is called into question is not just of others but of everyone, even oneself. In spying on people Caul starts to realise the truth of what he does.

Harry Caul: [upset, walking over to Martin] What are you doing here?

Martin Stett: Take it easy I'm just a messenger. I brought you a drink.

Harry Caul: I don't want your drink. Why are you following me?

Martin Stett: I'm not following you. I'm looking for you, big difference.

What The Conversation doesn’t include in my little mix of themes is corruption, except in the sense of the corruption of oneself. And this idea of corruption leads me to recommending Serpico [1973]. In it corruption is front and centre, corruption so widespread that trust is a rare commodity. It explores what it can feel like when you don’t know who to trust, and where the pressure to comply, even to join in with that corruption, is there every day, in your mind as much as it is in reality. Is it true that under such pressure all you can do is comply? Well …

Al Pacino plays the part of the eponymous hero Frank Serpico in this biographical movie. It follows his journey as a New York police officer who becomes a whistle-blower of police corruption. I saw it once decades ago, and I can still recall its tone, a couple of the scenes and the deeply emotional challenges he faces. Of all my recommendations this is the most violent, and I excuse myself on that front on the basis that this is drawn from Frank Serpico’s actual experiences.

Once you get to Serpico it would be easy to meander into more violent movies, or cop films, films like Copland, the 1997 story of a local sheriff, played by Sylvester Stallone, coming up against the corruption of the police who live in his town. Instead I want to bring you back out of that, back to intrigue. I’m going to invite you to view another piece about institutional corruption, the brilliant Chinatown [1974]. It was inspired by the California Water Wars, a series of disputes about water rights between 1913 and 1924. The water rights were acquired by the city of Los Angeles through political fighting and, as one commentator described, by "chicanery, subterfuge ... and a strategy of lies". In the film Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway are caught up in those machinations. The plot’s twists and turns mean that you have to be on the ball to keep up! Jack Nicholson’s character Jake Gittes, an ex-cop turned private investigator, is the one who is searching for a truth, and at times any truth in order to have something to hang on to, to build from.

Jake Gittes: Somebody went to a lot of trouble here, and I want to find out, lawsuit or no lawsuit. I'm not the one who's supposed to be caught with his pants down.

In Chinatown circumstance leads to a desperate search for truth, some of which is quite shocking. It is also about environmental issues and the ever-present drivers of corruption: politics and greed. These themes take us to my next recommendation – Edge of Darkness. There are two versions. IMDB reviewers prefer the 1985 six-part tv series starring Bob Peck and a mercurial Joe Don Baker. I have taken to the 2010 film with Mel Gibson, and a fabulous performance by Ray Winstone. In each Peck and Gibson play the same role, that of a policeman, Craven, investigating his daughter’s death. Edge of Darkness highlights the question ‘how far will someone go in search of the truth?’ How far will they go to reveal a cover-up? How far will the corrupt go to keep things hidden so that they may continue in their actions?

If this intrigues you, although it’s not quite on my overall thread, you may like to explore another film that tells a true story – The Insider [1999]. It’s about whistle-blowing, once again with Al Pacino, and with a bespectacled Russell Crowe as the whistle-blower seeking to bring the tobacco industry to task.

That idea of how far you will go is taken further in Parallax View [1974] about a journalist delving into a political assassination. Yes, there’s something about political assassinations in my recommendations. I guess that sits alongside corruption, at least in a number of these movies! The assassination may be to stop someone who knows something, or it may be to clear the way for a policy or preferred policy maker, something that prompts the problems for Julia Roberts’ Darby Shaw in The Pelican Brief [1993].

Before continuing with Parallax View let me pause a moment for a slight diversion, a meander, if you will. I am reminded of another movie in which Russell Crowe starred – State of Play [2009]. He and Rachel McAdams play journalists chasing down the truth behind the murder of a political assistant to Ben Affleck’s member of Congress, yes, a political assassination. I enjoyed the story and the film noir quality. It fits right in with the theme of truth and cover-ups, taking us into the realm of journalists as protagonists. It begs the question, as all of these movies do, of what do you do when the truth becomes so challenging that your life is on the line. In that respect all these movies have a moment, a point where the person seeking the truth is faced by a question of whether to continue, and if so, at what cost – threats to their own life, or to those of family and friends. Remember, too, that there is also the question of what happens when the truth comes out, and, for me, whether you can ever predict what will happen when truth is revealed.

Years ago, whilst studying ergonomics, I was researching crowding on the London Underground. In 1987 there was a well-reported incident, a fire at King’s Cross Station in which 31 people died and 100 were injured. The ‘truth’ of the safety risks was revealed, old escalators were replaced. Sixteen months later the station returned to normal and new safety regulations for the whole system were introduced. Yet, from the time of the fire until the new regulations were put in place, people continued to use London Underground at the same busy levels as before. The day after an incident with multiple fatalities, even in light of a truth about station safety, people continued their old behaviour at other stations on the system. This suggests that this truth was less important to them then the actuality of paying bills, meeting friends or finding some alternate route to where they were going.

Back to Parallax View. As with State of Play it’s chief protagonists, played by Warren Beatty and Paula Prentiss, are journalists delving into a political assassination. In this case their exploration leads them to investigate a private corporation that, it transpires, is providing wet work [assassinations] for those who will pay. Like the Bourne series of books and films it also concerns something of the psychological selection and training of assassins, who those assassins are and who they become. Inherently it works in a world where trust is fluid, and, if you look for it in any of these films, the difference between ‘unconditional trust in someone’ and the ‘trust that someone will do something’ that is more akin to obedience or compliance. I wrote about this dynamic in the article ‘Whom Do You Trust?’ published in The Systems’ Thinker, Volume 16. It’s available online, for free, if you’re interested.

Obviously there are lots of articles, books and talks about the topics that form the thread of these recommendations. Another that may interest you is a piece on youtube by English film director, screenwriter, and broadcaster, Alex Cox. In his 1993 Moviedrome introduction to the Parallax View he addresses the context for it in light of political assassinations and the creation of those assassins.

Parallax View and The Bourne series, including The Bourne Legacy, and my next recommendation, all bring to mind the MKUltra program that was instigated by the CIA between 1953 and 1973. The program was about establishing techniques to torture, brainwash and subvert individuals for the benefit of the state using physical, psychological and drug interventions. It gained controversy for illegalities in the techniques applied and for the use of ‘unwitting’ test subjects. Amazingly the program carried out activities not just behind closed CIA doors and front organisations, but in the guise of research at institutions including colleges and universities, hospitals, prisons, and pharmaceutical companies.

Such ‘training’ as occurred in MKUltra takes us neatly to 1962’s The Manchurian Candidate starring Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey, telling of the brainwashing of POW GIs in the Korean war. There is a 2004 version with Denzel Washington and Liev Schreiber which is well worth seeing for the comparison. My preference is the 1962 movie with Sinatra and Harvey, and a scheming Angela Lansbury who was Oscar nominated for her role!

The plot follows a soldier [Sinatra and Washington as Marco] searching for the truth, investigating a fellow soldier [Harvey and Schreiber as Raymond Shaw] who, it transpires, was taken into a program to transform him into an assassin via brainwashing. This may seem further from my original premise of trust – the brainwashed soldier is inherently compliant and not a willing participant. Yet they are trusted because of the trust in the efficacy of the brainwashing which is clearly tested. The same occurs for Bourne and Aaron Cross too. Neither Bourne, Cross nor Shaw really know what they are letting themselves in for. They are not necessarily trusted a s individuals but as weapons of their masters. More subtly, when they realise their actions, and the consequences, at some level they start to question their trust in themselves.

It might seem obvious that where assassins are involved something of the nature of being an assassin is about who, if anyone, you can trust. Yet in all the recommendations, whomever the truth seeker is [lawyer, policeman, private investigator, journalist or a spy] a loss of trust, or concern for whom to trust, may result in caution, or game playing, or it might equally tip them over the edge into paranoia.

Mentioning spies I could not offer these recommendations without including the following two films. In each it is a spy that is searching for the truth, finding their way between intrigues and working out who, if anyone, they can trust.

The first is the 1965 classic The Ipcress File with Michael Caine as Harry Palmer. It’s a wonderful journey of intrigue which has, at its core the question of whom Harry should trust. When it comes to the crunch his choice is not between good and bad, but really between bad and less bad. The plot centres on the use of brainwashing even though it only becomes evident later in the film. Within the world of spies there is always the possibility of paranoia. In this case no doubt reflecting the time of its making at the height of the Cold War which ran from around perhaps 1953, the year of Stalin’s death, up until about 1973.

In The Ipcress File the technique used to brainwash and subvert people is displayed in a classic scene. It’s funny to think that it is something akin to subliminal learning with binaural beats that nowadays people will pay personal development programs to experience! The technique in question is called: ‘Induction of Psychoneuroses by Conditioned Reflex Under Stress’.

There’s a great moment where Palmer finds out how far people may have to go in search of the truth. He is talking with his boss Major Dalby, who is wonderfully portrayed by Nigel Green:

Palmer: The fellow whose job I'm taking, will he show me the ropes?

Major Dalby: Maybe – if you're in touch with the spirit world.

Palmer: I beg your pardon?

Major Dalby: He was shot this morning.

That brings me neatly to my penultimate recommendation, where something happens in the morning too. It’s not, perhaps, as well known as the other films, and yet it hovers in my mind every so often, even though it’s another film I’ve only seen once. It is Three Days of the Condor [1975]. It’s based on James Grady’s 1974 novel Six Days of the Condor. What happened to the three days that were cut when it went to film I don’t know, maybe the protagonist James Turner, played by Robert Redford was quicker at getting to the truth, or ran faster! Joining Redford is Faye Dunaway, who, by now, you may have seen in her amazing role in Chinatown. The relationship of their characters, Turner and photographer Kathy Hale, is an intriguing exploration of the development of trust between two strangers under stress.

What I loved about this film is that Turner, a CIA researcher, is unaccustomed to physically chasing after the truth. As an analyst he searches books and publications for truth, and lies. This makes it intriguing to see him pushed, unwillingly, into a search for truth. His search is about finding what happened that led to him being targetted for death and finding out who, if anyone, he can trust.

There’s one more film I’d like to add to the list – Michael Clayton [2007]. In a way it takes us back to The International with which I started this journey. It also follows on from Three Days of the Condor. We’re back to a lawyer as the eponymous protagonist, an ex-District Attorney played by George Clooney. Naomi Watts role in The International is as an Assistant DA. Clayton is now a law company fixer and he’s been asked to tidy up a mess. The link with Three Days of the Condor is that the protagonist is pushed into searching for a truth when they might otherwise have let things be. There search does not arise from a particular stance they have, or a role, or prior trauma, it is because circumstances force them into the search.

Just like Clive Owen’s character in The International Clooney’s Clayton has his own flaws and challenges. He too has to learn whom to trust as the situation he is tasked to fix starts to spiral out of control. In Clayton’s case, once he has a truth there is then the decision of what, if anything, to do with it.

For my part, having revealed the truth that I love these films and am intrigued by their themes, I realise that I have never considered that my choice of movies held particular themes. It makes absolute sense, yet making sense in hindsight is different from selecting them consciously at the time because they fitted an explicit thread.

Perhaps this will inspire you to explore the movies I’ve recommended, or to search for the themes that attract you to watch what you watch. In either case best wishes on your adventures!

PS: Suffice to say I will be settling back to read Six Days of the Condor, and then to watch Three Days of the Condor in a search for lost time. Perhaps the change in timescale is purely that it’s quicker to watch the story than to read it. I look forward to finding out!