Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 3-February-08
Spoiler Rating: High

Eye of the Needle (1981)

I find it odd that historical thrillers aren't popular at the box office. They lend weight to dramatic situations by linking them to a lush and undeniable past. Love, sex, betrayal, courage, and violence jazz up many a film, but set that stuff in a medieval court and it appears more substantial and exotic. This point is driven home when watching "Eye of the Needle," which uses a critical moment during World War II as the foundation for romantic intrigue. It helps, of course, that the film is well written and well told.

History is the key to "Eye of the Needle," but not just the backdrop of events leading up to D-Day. The most admirable aspect of the movie is how it describes the personal history of its main character with just a few bits of information, letting the viewer fill in the rest. The protagonist is a German spy named Faber (Donald Sutherland) who has been living in Britain as a native while sending top secret intelligence to the Nazis. We learn his identity early on (along with his fondness for putting a switchblade between people's ribs), even as we are introduced to a long-suffering homemaker named Lucy (Kate Nelligan). She lives on a desolate island off the English coast with her husband David (Christopher Cazenove), who has been bitterly withdrawn since losing his legs in an accident on their wedding day. Several scenes paint a clear portrait of Lucy's grim resolve to keep her marriage going, although she is loath to admit her loneliness and sorrow.

Shipwrecked on Lucy's island while trying to rendezvous with a U-boat, Faber is unexpectedly drawn to her warmth and suffering — and bold enough to capitalize upon them. The unlikely pair immediately begins an affair right under David's nose, at least until his suspicions make him dangerous to the spy. The affair consists of a couple sweaty nights and a walk along the cliffs during which Faber drops two comments that lay bare his past (at least to the audience; Lucy is too besotted with the experience to interpret it yet). One comment is that parents, poor ones, sometimes push their children to compensate for their own shortcomings. The other is that in the book he is supposedly writing (he tells Lucy he is a novelist), the hero kills the heroine because she breaks his heart. This recalls an earlier statement by a British officer that Faber once had a passionate fling with a singer or actress. We never learn much about Faber, but we know all we need to know. He is driven and cruel, yet susceptible to love.

And love is what he feels for Lucy, even after she catches on to his nature and vocation and takes up arms to protect herself and her child. There is a nail-biting chase involving a dark, rainy path and an old, creaky lighthouse, with screaming and a hatchet and the whole nine yards. Reactions to lesser thrillers flash through the viewer's mind, thoughts of horror movie clichés and tantalizing caveats against adultery, but what is finally left is the striking impression of a man and woman who changed the course of each other's lives and of history.

Copyright © 2008 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.