Folly and fatality

 
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The Good Shepherd is an all-star slow burn of a film, but no less compelling for that. Robert De Niro expects much of his audience in his direction of what is, admittedly, a fairly drawn-out tale of trust and betrayal. As a result, some give up the struggle. What is ostensibly an espionage thriller gets dismissed as over-intellectualised and peculiarly cold or unaffecting. Matt Damon was clearly directed to play Edward Wilson as emotionally crippled as possible (and in that respect is not a million miles from Anthony Hopkins as Mr Stevens, the agonisingly buttoned-up butler in The Remains of the Day). Consequently, it is hard to root for the protagonist, unless that includes squirming and frustration on his behalf! There is no doubting the sincerity of his motives or emotions, but as he finds himself buffeted by every wind of international affairs from the Second World War to the Bay of Pigs debacle under Kennedy's presidency, the 'greater good' erodes his humanity. Flawed though this film may be, keeping pace with the slow burn certainly pays off. Images and dialogue from this film stayed with me for days. What makes The Good Shepherd so challenging is not its length or the political intricacies of its plot, but its searing analysis of what constitutes trust and loyalty - especially when different loyalties come into conflict. And in the end, the quest to gain a knowledge that has traditionally been the sole domain of God, results in having to make decisions for which the finite and sinful human mind is hopelessly unqualified.

Most of the story is shown in flashbacks, designed to help us understand the mysterious credits sequence. In that sense it follows a structure like the action-packed Pitt and Redford vehicle Spy Game. But this is not the world of Bond or even Bourne; It is far closer to the Cold War territory of Le Carré's George Smiley: slow, methodical, discreet, and therefore much more tense and credible. To look at him, you would never guess Wilson was a senior intelligence chief as he commutes into Washington each day alongside the faceless Trilby-wearing functionaries of state. And that is precisely the point. In fact, this is, in some ways, an American homage to both Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley's People - except here the betrayals come far closer to home. Wilson even has his KGB nemesis, the mysterious Ulysses (played by the magnetic Ukrainian American Oleg Shtefanko), echoing Smiley's KGB obsession, Karla. They pad around each other like wary panthers, each waiting for their adversary to blink first. This mutual obsession is personal and appears to have little to do with the machinations of their political overlords, a fact that has desperate and tragic consequences for Wilson's family.

Families should provide all that we need for security, trust and openness. Yet Wilson's childhood had been one of profound insecurity: one of the most affecting flashbacks sees him as a boy interrupting his naval officer father's preparations for suicide. Through his own folly and fallibility, Wilson's father had been unable to take care of his family. It is a genre cliché (from the Men from U.N.C.L.E. to Spooks) that the intelligence services work to enable ordinary families to sleep safely at night. But it was specifically to protect such things that the young Wilson signed up for intelligence work while still at Yale. Ulysses unnervingly appears to understand this, because he gives him the codename 'Mother'. Ulysses parting words in the film are poignant, therefore, (especially after he has done his best to destroy Wilson's family): 'Friends can be enemies and enemies, friends . . . I believe in family.'

Without a living father, Wilson is inevitably drawn to surrogates: General Sullivan (Robert de Niro) and the British Professor Fredericks (Michael Gambon). They function as his intelligence service mentors and they give him the same advice. Sullivan says, 'No matter what anyone tells you, there'll be no one you can really trust.' Then as part of his London field training, Fredericks makes this chilling observation:

Fredericks: The very qualities that make a good intelligence officer - a suspicious mind, love of complexity and detail; mental facilities to detect conspiracies and betrayal - are the same qualities most likely to corrode natural judgment. Everything that seems clear is bent, and everything that seems bent is clear . . . a lie masquerades as a truth. . . .
Wilson: How do I know I can even trust you?
Fredericks: You won't. I hope you are lucky enough to meet someone you trust. I regret to say, I haven't.

Such counsel is in marked contrast to Wilson's real father's last words: 'Don't ever lie. You won't be trusted and you won't have friends. You won't be safe.' Yet all three father figures do agree on one thing: lies do not bring safety. It is just that Wilson has entered a profession where not lying can be fatal. But Fredericks's use of the word 'corrode' is telling as it is not simply 'natural judgment' that is affected. All the relationships in the film get corroded because in a world of bluff, double and even triple bluff, trust is impossible. Hence Wilson's bitter parting words to his English counterpart, Arch Cummings (played by Billy Crudup with a heroic, but sadly rather doomed, attempt at an upper class English drawl). Cummings is loosely based on the MI6 traitor Kim Philby and, early in his friendship with Wilson, he asks, 'Do you know what my deepest fear is? That I will end up friendless; completely alone.' After Cummings's betrayal is discovered, Wilson phones him in Moscow and simply states, 'Your worst fear has come true.'

The worst thing about Wilson's situation, though, is the effect his profession has on his own family. There had been someone Wilson could trust: the beautiful Laura (Tammy Blanchard), a fellow student at Yale. Significantly, she is deaf and therefore cannot eavesdrop. She communicates by body language and lip-reading. It is much harder to dissemble when someone is reading your every move, and, indeed, she always knows when things are not quite right with Wilson. It is his sense of duty, however, that compels him to unceremoniously dump Laura for Clover, and conceal his love for her for the rest of the life. After his marriage, he then transfers his aspirations to his own son, as indicated by his decision to name him Edward Junior. He is determined to do a better job than his own father. He is determined to provide the place of security he never had as a child, and his affection for him is profound and real. We only see them embrace twice in the film (each after very disturbing moments) and into those embraces is poured all the paternal emotions of a lifetime. Yet it is precisely his father's profession that causes Edward Junior to feel profoundly insecure. Edward Junior's was a childhood of corridor whispers and eavesdropping, half-heard conversations, which his father dismisses as 'grown-up talk'. These were matters that were clearly more pressing than a young child's yearning for his father to sit with him while he tries to get back to sleep after a nightmare. As he grows up, he does everything he can to attract his father's attention, eventually following in his footsteps to Yale. But he is never entirely successful. Even at a university choral concert in which Edward Junior has a starring role (echoing his father's passions as a student for singing Gilbert and Sullivan), he sees Wilson whispering away to Ulysses on what had clearly become an opportunity for a rendezvous. It is the atmosphere of eavesdropping (the spy's trade) which leads to Edward Junior's undoing with devastating consequences. Combined with his unfulfilled longing for domestic safety and security, he was easy pickings for Ulysses. 'Mother' could not protect him from that. At the film's tragic denouement, Wilson senior cries desperately to his son:

Wilson: I can't protect you any more. I can't keep you safe
Edward Junior: SAFE!? SAFE!? I never felt safe with you because everything was a secret.

It was this lack of safety which drove him into the arms of an African KGB agent in the first place. Wilson's wife (played well by Angelina Jolie) is a vaguely unconvincing character - it is hard to understand exactly what attracts her to Wilson at the start, except possibly a strong-silent-type appeal. But she does all she can to protect her son from the world her husband inhabits, as does Wilson himself, but to no avail. Forces far bigger than either or both of them are at work.

For this film is only about individuals insofar as they reveal the costs of the bigger plan - the CIA's genesis and development into what it is today. This is where contemporary political resonances are hard to miss. The setting of Yale University for both father and son is especially relevant, for that is home to the infamous Skull and Bones secret society - of which both Presidents Bush were members. Wilson, like his father before him, is initiated through bizarre and even obscene semi-Masonic rituals, during which they swear undying loyalty to their fellow-Bonesmen. Although the origins of the CIA (and its predecessor the Office of Strategic Services) are linked with Skull and Bones, this film perhaps exaggerates the link. Nevertheless, George Bush Senior was indeed a CIA director, and many of the other key figures in its history were members of this or other secret societies.

When Wilson gets tapped, he has no idea what he is letting himself in for - but the warnings are there from the start, as personified by the oleaginous Richard Hayes (brilliantly played by Lee Pace). Hayes is never fully trustworthy or trusting. He says on Wilson's admission to the Bonesmen, 'I hope we won't have to question your loyalty' (a not-so-subtle threat after the unreliability of his suicidal father). Yet by the time the film ends, Wilson's loyalty to the American cause has proved absolute, having been tested in the grimmest of circumstances. His own loves, as well of those of his son, have been sacrificed. His choices have caused him to lose everything except his professional status. He is a cog in a machine. This is foreshadowed by the rather clunky detail in his first CIA office - the sign on the door declares, 'NOT AN EXIT'. No wonder that when the CIA moves out of Washington DC into their new complex in Langley, Hayes turns to the only man he can trust. Wilson has proved his worth.

Richard Hayes: The President's asked me to become Director and do a complete housecleaning at my discretion. I need someone I can trust. After all, we're still brothers. This building doesn't get built without you. You're CIA's heart and soul. Who knows, you might have a secret about me in that safe of yours. This whole wing will be your part of the world: Counterintelligence. Take a look around. I've got an oversight meeting. Can you imagine? They think they can look into our closet, as if we'd let them.
[Hayes starts to walk away, stops and turns]
Richard Hayes: I remember a senator once asked me, when we talk about 'CIA', why we never use the word 'the' in front of it. And I asked him, 'Do you put the word 'the' in front of 'God'?'

The untrammelled power of the embryonic organisation had been General Sullivan's biggest private fear when he first recruited Wilson. That is why he saw the need for oversight.

Bill Sullivan: I have to tell you, I have some real problems with this whole thing despite how much we need it. I'm concerned that too much power will end up in the hands of too few. It's always in somebody's best interest to promote enemies real or imagined. I see this as America's eyes and ears; I don't want it to become its heart and soul. So I told the President, for this to work there is going to have to be some kind of civilian oversight.
Edward Wilson: Oversight? How can you have a covert organization if you have people looking over your shoulder?
Bill Sullivan: You know who gave Hitler his power? The clerks and the book-keepers, the civil servants. I have this one weakness: I believe in a just God. I always seem to err on the side of democracy . . . I'm afraid when all is said and done we're all just clerks too.

The point of the film seems to be that the CIA has become precisely what Sullivan most feared. Perhaps this is why Robert de Niro the director plays the cameo role of General Sullivan the prophet. He believes in a just God - and the need for oversight over flawed human institutions. Hayes believes the CIA to be God, and thus oversight to be both inconvenient and insulting. His CIA is the humanistic Super-Panopticon of Jeremy Bentham's nightmare - an all-seeing, all-hearing, ever-present surveillance machine, sitting in Olympian detachment above the hoards far below. When Wilson and Ulysses have their final meeting in the Smithsonian museum, a children's choir is singing 'He's got the whole world in his hands'. In the film's context, the song's subject is not God but 'CIA'. Hence also the ironic title for the film, presumably. For again, the Good Shepherd in context is not Jesus, but 'CIA'. That has become America's 'heart and soul', and consequently the nation has lost its humanity, as personified by its most dedicated servant, Edward Wilson. For a human being, or organisation of human beings, seeking to be, or to replace, God is the epitome of human sinfulness. Thus America is not the New Jerusalem of the founding fathers but yet another Tower of Babel. That is why the choices made by such an organisation lead to such catastrophe and disaster. For to usurp God is folly and in the end, it is fatal.

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