Is Bridge of Spies real­ly about a new Cold War?

In his 1982 film E.T. – The Extra-Ter­res­tri­al, direc­tor Steven Spiel­berg told the sto­ry of a puck­ish young scamp to organ­ise the safe trans­port of a diminu­tive, brown alien back to his home plan­et. This search for clo­sure, the con­cept and mean­ing of fam­i­ly, the worth of a sin­gle life and the mean­ing of every­day hero­ism are themes that crop up again and again with­in this director’s world-beat­ing back catalogue.

You can in fact draw a direct line between his for­ma­tive sci-fi tear­jerk­er and his lat­est pic­ture, Bridge of Spies, about a puck­ish legal eagle attempt­ing to arrange the safe trans­port of anoth­er alien to his home­land – this time, it’s a soft­ly-spo­ken Russ­ian spy cap­tured on Amer­i­can soil. The film, star­ring Tom Han­ks and Mark Rylance, traces that hard process, which is made all the more intri­cate by the fact that it’s hap­pen­ing slap-bang in the midst of the Cold War.

Polit­i­cal ten­sions are at melt­ing point – it’s by no means a sim­ple act of bro­ker­ing an exchange of pris­on­ers, our Russ­ian spy for your Amer­i­can spy. Every nuance, every syl­la­ble risks giv­ing one side the upper hand, which could result in vic­to­ry, even if just psy­cho­log­i­cal. Spiel­berg has often focused on the adven­ture ele­ment of a per­son get­ting back home to recon­nect with fam­i­ly, but in Bridge of Spies, he decon­structs and dis­tills that con­cept, pre­sent­ing it as a mine­field of sub­tle diplo­ma­cy and dou­ble deals.

Though the action in the film remains his­tor­i­cal­ly spe­cif­ic, with back-room bar­ter­ing tak­ing place in the snowy, des­o­late back streets and bru­tal­ist embassies of a divid­ed Berlin, it speaks of any and all mod­ern con­flicts. Wars may be about the stuff we see report­ed on TV, and peo­ple shoot­ing at one anoth­er with heavy artillery, but the chess pieces are del­i­cate­ly shift­ed by the vital who con­trol the game. These peo­ple wear suits, they are high­ly artic­u­late, and their moral scru­ples are extreme­ly flexible.

This piece goes deep on the themes with­in Bridge of Spies and how its lessons can applied to sto­ries beyond the para­noiac stand-off between Rus­sia and Amer­i­ca in the direct post­war period.

Bridge of Spies opens in UK cin­e­mas on 27 November