Blair. Barley Blair.

The Russia House (1990), Directed by Fred Schepisi

By Fearless Young Orphan

The British (though obviously Scottish) owner of a publishing company is drawn into the spy game when a Russian scientist tries to smuggle a tell-all book about Soviet nuclear capabilities out of the country and into publication. In the process, the publisher falls in love with a Russian book editor who is serving as go- between, and eventually they must avoid capture and death when the KGB discovers their plans. The movie is based on a novel by John Le Carre, and is set in the last gasp of the Soviet Union, the age of glasnost. The Russia House has a great many qualities to recommend it that have little bearing on the actual plot of the film. First and of foremost relevance to me is the presence of James Bond himself, Mr. Sean Connery, in the lead role of publisher- turned-spy Barley Blair. Yeah I know, the name is a bit off. Still, he is a presence to be reckoned with. Barley is an ex-patriot living in Lisbon and enamored with Russia, but he wants to see that country come out from under its regime to the new world. His ideology is what attracts the scientist, code name Dante, to choose him as the method of delivery for this top-secret book.

Sean Connery is sort of a scream in this situation – playing a reticent, non-spying, idealistic literary type when he is so obviously James Bond. Again and again he reassures people that “he is not a spy,” but I always felt like he was winking. I have never thought Mr. Connery was a great actor – he is all bluster and presence, which are perfectly suitable characteristics for a movie star – and he’s rather too old for this role. He is obviously old enough to be the father of his love interest. Not a deal-breaker.

Thanks to my conditioning and his history in films, I did not exactly believe that Barley Blair was a mild-mannered book publisher so much as a renegade apostate, ready to bring down entire governments for the sake of his own ideas. If they’d brought in a different actor – a 1990 Tommy Lee Jones or William Hurt, perhaps, I might have believed something else. Like it or not, actors come with their resumes in tow. That’s why seeing Roy Scheider here as a high-ranking CIA operative made me think about Jaws through the entire film. “Get back to Amity, Chief Brody!” I kept saying to him. “There’s sharkin’ to be done!”

The film has a big cast of recognizable faces, including Klaus Maria Brandauer as the scientist Dante (or Yakov, which is his real name) who immediately resents the fact that somehow Barley’s irresponsibility has gotten the United States and Great Britain governments involved when all he wanted to do was publish a book. There are secret meetings and the passing of cool-looking notebooks and information back and forth, heavy questions full of suspicion, or basically, spy shit, which for some reason tends to go in one of my ears and right out the other. I really have to concentrate in these types of stories or I completely lose the thread of the plot. I think it’s because I don’t believe it important, all those secrets floating back and forth. The real drama for me is always in the transport of the information: the risks that must be taken, the precautions, and how hard it is to have a conversation when everyone is listening in. So if I breeze over salient logistic details, like what exactly it is that is in those notebooks, forgive me. I mean, I know it’s stuff about nuclear capabilities, and I know it has the CIA worried, but not for the reasons one might expect. Beyond that, I don’t much care.

Michelle Pfeiffer is Katya, the book editor and go-between who is a former lover of Dante’s. Now she is a divorced working mother with two children. She has gone out on this dangerous limb to help Dante because she believes in his ideas too, and considers him a close friend. Now, Barley Blair gets one look at her in a briefing photograph and realizes she’s Michelle Pfeiffer: he’s in love before they ever even meet. If Barley is recruited by Great Britain to step in and play spy for a while, that’s all well and good, but maybe someone should have noticed that from Minute One, he’s more interested in the welfare of Katya than of any government.

I don’t know, folks – is it ever wise to drag a common scruffy ex-patriot out of hiding and convince him to go spying for you while dangling a really beautiful, vulnerable woman out there? Come on, exactly how much work do you expect he’ll get done? Well, lucky for us, Michelle Pfeiffer is a solid actress who can play a woman with many dimensions and a real personality beyond just having a face that is very easy on the eyes. She does the Russian accent really well, too. I was impressed. We come to like her and care about her far more than we actually care about Barley, but that’s not a problem because we’ll assume that as James Bond, Barley can damn well take care of himself.

Blah blah blah, there’s all this spying and lurking about going on, as Barley and Katya fall in love with each other over secret meetings and information exchanges. Most of these meetings take place in and around astonishing Russian architecture, which is reason to see this movie if nothing else is. Apparently this was only the second American film allowed to actually be made in the Soviet Union, and as such the creators decided that they were going to showcase the loveliest things the country had to offer. It’s a movie of considerable beauty, set against that cold, overcast Russian sky. All those cathedrals and statues and mighty palaces will just bring out the architectural geek in you.

What is missing to a greater extent is a sense of fear. The Communist Regime is implied here but, in this viewer’s opinion, downplayed. It is not that I demand to see evil KGB agents at every corner, twirling their mustaches, but so much of what happens to Barley and Katya seems to be panic in the face of nothing. I sense no danger except their occasional paranoid pointing at possible listening devices.

A few months ago I discussed the movie Farewell on the Foreign Films Investigated page; that intense bit of real-life spy drama gives a much more intimidating view of life under the eyes of a Communist regime. Everyone is watching everyone, and you are in as much danger of being reported by your neighbor or your housekeeper than you are of having a bug hidden in your lamp. The menace of Big Brother watching is always heightens suspense powerfully, for how safe can you possibly be when you are never alone, never uncensored?

The Russia House was far more concerned with the surveillance conducted by the United States and Great Britain than it was anything done by the Soviets – in fact Soviet intervention seems only an afterthought, when plans start derailing. Is this commentary that we are our own worst enemies? Or is it a more simple explanation? I’ll offer a couple: the film is more concerned with its love story, and the film is not terribly concerned about the Russians at all. Now the biggest question: is it a watchable, enjoyable movie? It was to me, though not for the espionage so much as for the previously mentioned boons: James Bond, Michelle Pfeiffer, magnificent Russian architecture, a soundtrack that takes me back to the time when soundtracks really meant something in the course of a film and had recognizable themes and harmonies.

The Russia House, though made in 1990 which was not so terribly long ago, feels like a good old-fashioned film, like something that could have been made in the 1950s, possibly even directed by Alfred Hitchcock, who would have dispensed with much of the spy-details and simply gotten on with the beleaguered romance. I recommend approaching it with sincerity, nostalgia, maturity, and if you cannot, it will most likely bore you. There’s a lot of sitting around and indirect talking. That may be how the spy game works, but I keep reminding you, the spy game is not what is interesting about The Russia House. Plus, it’s too much fun to hear Sean Connery say, repeatedly and in his unparalleled style, “Thersh a parrrl-ty on Thairsh-day”1 while he’s handing out invitations.

1 For the Scottish-impaired, a translation: “There’s a party on Thursday.”