OFFICIAL SECRETS
****
Director: Gavin Hood
Screenwriters: Gregory Bernstein, Sara Bernstein and Gavin Hood, based on the book The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War: Katharine Gun and the Secret Plot to Sanction the Iraq Invasion by Marcia and Thomas Mitchell.
Principal cast:
Keira Knightley
Matthew Goode
Matt Smith
Ralph Fiennes
Rhys Ifans
Adam Bakri
Country: UK/USA
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 112 mins.
Australian release date: 21 November 2019
Previewed at: British Film Festival 2019, Sydney.
To this day, the upheaval caused by the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the so-called ‘Coalition of the Willing’ is still on-going and, with hindsight, one wonders if this destruction would have been avoided if a significant attempt to reveal the truth had been dealt with appropriately. The leak of a sensitive document by an employee at the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham was a valiant yet vain attempt to stop the imminent war for which US President George W. Bush was agitating. This event, and the subsequent arrest of the whistle-blower, is the subject of Official Secrets. Had the disclosure had its desired effect, it would have spared hundreds of thousands of lives and avoided many years of conflict in the Middle-East.
Official Secrets is the work of the South African director Gavin Hood, based on a 2008 book by Marcia and Thomas Mitchell, and it’s a riveting account of one woman’s endeavour to prevent a looming disaster. In 2003, Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley), who worked as a translator in a team at GCHQ’s signals intelligence and information division - providing classified information to the British Government and Armed Forces - copied a top-secret memo she had seen containing evidence about an illegal spying operation by the US National Security Agency. The memo urged the UK to collaborate in an intelligence “surge” to gather information on UN Security Council members, with a view to procuring a UN resolution to send troops to Iraq. Eventually, it found its way into the hands of Martin Bright (Matt Smith), a journalist at The Observer newspaper in London, where, after much discussion about its authenticity, the editor gave the go-ahead to print the exposé and all hell broke loose. Hood’s film takes us along with Gun as she journeys into the belly of the judicial and intelligence systems, revealing the complexity, hypocrisy and sheer vindictiveness she had to deal with to establish the truth.
Although it runs a little under two hours, Official Secrets is thoroughly engaging. If you took part in the massive global marches that preceded the invasion of Iraq back in 2003, the largest demonstrations in human history (in the interest of full disclosure, we did), to relive these events is extremely depressing. Even if you didn’t, the film will make you angry. The leaders of the USA, the UK and Australia were complicit in the deception of their peoples by assuring them that Saddam Hussein had ‘weapons of mass destruction’ at his disposal, when in fact he did not. Katharine Gun was aware of this and bravely put the interests of her country above those of her government and political masters. Knightley does a superb job of portraying her and conveying her sense of moral rectitude. There was nothing out of the ordinary about this woman, she just couldn’t bear to see her country go to war on the basis of a lie. The supporting cast members are equally adept, especially Fiennes and Smith.
Official Secrets reveals a great amount of information in its thoroughly well-researched script, yet it does so in a way that is easy to follow and never dull. On the contrary, the film is very tense. It is also a sobering experience, especially when the toll of the civilian and troop deaths and casualties is emblazoned across the screen before the end credits roll. It makes you ask, “What if the leaders of the ‘free world’ had acted honestly? What sort of a different world would we be living in today?”
Screenwriters: Gregory Bernstein, Sara Bernstein and Gavin Hood, based on the book The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War: Katharine Gun and the Secret Plot to Sanction the Iraq Invasion by Marcia and Thomas Mitchell.
Principal cast:
Keira Knightley
Matthew Goode
Matt Smith
Ralph Fiennes
Rhys Ifans
Adam Bakri
Country: UK/USA
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 112 mins.
Australian release date: 21 November 2019
Previewed at: British Film Festival 2019, Sydney.
To this day, the upheaval caused by the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the so-called ‘Coalition of the Willing’ is still on-going and, with hindsight, one wonders if this destruction would have been avoided if a significant attempt to reveal the truth had been dealt with appropriately. The leak of a sensitive document by an employee at the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham was a valiant yet vain attempt to stop the imminent war for which US President George W. Bush was agitating. This event, and the subsequent arrest of the whistle-blower, is the subject of Official Secrets. Had the disclosure had its desired effect, it would have spared hundreds of thousands of lives and avoided many years of conflict in the Middle-East.
Official Secrets is the work of the South African director Gavin Hood, based on a 2008 book by Marcia and Thomas Mitchell, and it’s a riveting account of one woman’s endeavour to prevent a looming disaster. In 2003, Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley), who worked as a translator in a team at GCHQ’s signals intelligence and information division - providing classified information to the British Government and Armed Forces - copied a top-secret memo she had seen containing evidence about an illegal spying operation by the US National Security Agency. The memo urged the UK to collaborate in an intelligence “surge” to gather information on UN Security Council members, with a view to procuring a UN resolution to send troops to Iraq. Eventually, it found its way into the hands of Martin Bright (Matt Smith), a journalist at The Observer newspaper in London, where, after much discussion about its authenticity, the editor gave the go-ahead to print the exposé and all hell broke loose. Hood’s film takes us along with Gun as she journeys into the belly of the judicial and intelligence systems, revealing the complexity, hypocrisy and sheer vindictiveness she had to deal with to establish the truth.
Although it runs a little under two hours, Official Secrets is thoroughly engaging. If you took part in the massive global marches that preceded the invasion of Iraq back in 2003, the largest demonstrations in human history (in the interest of full disclosure, we did), to relive these events is extremely depressing. Even if you didn’t, the film will make you angry. The leaders of the USA, the UK and Australia were complicit in the deception of their peoples by assuring them that Saddam Hussein had ‘weapons of mass destruction’ at his disposal, when in fact he did not. Katharine Gun was aware of this and bravely put the interests of her country above those of her government and political masters. Knightley does a superb job of portraying her and conveying her sense of moral rectitude. There was nothing out of the ordinary about this woman, she just couldn’t bear to see her country go to war on the basis of a lie. The supporting cast members are equally adept, especially Fiennes and Smith.
Official Secrets reveals a great amount of information in its thoroughly well-researched script, yet it does so in a way that is easy to follow and never dull. On the contrary, the film is very tense. It is also a sobering experience, especially when the toll of the civilian and troop deaths and casualties is emblazoned across the screen before the end credits roll. It makes you ask, “What if the leaders of the ‘free world’ had acted honestly? What sort of a different world would we be living in today?”