Television Review: David Hare’s ‘Page Eight’ on PBS - Review
Of course not. None of those scenarios are possible because “Page Eight” was written by the British playwright and filmmaker David Hare, and his feelings about the West Bank and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq supersede his storytelling: he cares too much to give a surprise twist to this oft-told tale of American perfidy. And it’s a shame because “Page Eight,” <a href="http://www.womenfashionbag.com/burberry-shopper-c-43_50.html"><strong>burberry discount</strong></a> a BBC film that will be on PBS on Sunday, is a moody modern-day espionage tale with flawless performances by the likes of Bill Nighy, Rachel Weisz, Michael Gambon, Judy Davis and Ralph Fiennes. It’s the right cast in the right setting but with a wrongfully righteous script. The image of America as a blundering bully who betrays even its closest allies in pursuit of an invented enemy stretches from Graham Greene and John le Carré to the romantic comedy “Love Actually.” The fact that the depiction is sometimes accurate doesn’t mean that it always makes for exciting fiction. That’s why Robert Harris added a murder mystery to “The Ghost,” his thinly disguised novel about the real reason Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain supported the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. (It was the C.I.A.’s fault.) The Iraq war is particularly galling because in that case, at least, the British can’t find solace in the knowledge that they told us so. Worse yet, France did. Mr. Blair egged us on and even sent in troops, and he was a Labor politician to boot, which made it all that much harder for the British intelligentsia to feel superior. “Page Eight” is yet another polemic that portrays Britain as America’s poodle. Mr. Hare has railed against American foreign policy before, notably in the plays “Stuff Happens” <a href="http://www.womenfashionbag.com/lv-monogram-multicolore-c-20_32.html"><strong>lv bags</strong></a> and “The Vertical Hour.” There was little hope that this time his warmongers’ duplicity and ill will would serve as a red herring: a denouement that exonerates the Oval Office, 10 Downing Street and the Mossad would be as shocking to contemporary British fiction as the “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” was to detective novels in the 1920s. Mr. Nighy plays Johnny Worricker, a high-level MI5 officer who has survived generations of purges and power struggles by trusting no one and always keeping his cool. Nearing the end of his career, he’s a divorced upper-class loner who is close only to his old Cambridge friend and secret service mentor, Benedict Baron, played by Mr. Gambon. The two share a lot: Benedict is married to Johnny’s ex-wife. The friends are also privy to a secret on Page 8 of a classified document that is so sensitive it could bring down the British government — or destroy them both. Mr. Nighy has played well-bred civil servants before, notably in “The Girl in the Café,” a 2005 film on HBO, so it’s a treat to see the nuances he brings to this variation of the species. Johnny is intelligent and suave, with <a href="http://www.womenfashionbag.com/burberry-burberry-wallets-c-43_45.html"><strong>burberry trenches</strong></a> impeccable manners that keep people at bay, but there is a glint of suppressed mischief behind his imperturbable facade. He is also quite sad, of course, and lonely. Johnny suspects that it wasn’t only coincidence that brought him into contact with a beautiful neighbor, Nancy Pierpan (Ms. Weisz), a book editor who asks for his help getting rid of an unwanted suitor. Nancy does have an agenda — she wants to find proof that Israeli troops killed her brother when he was peacefully protesting on behalf of displaced Palestinians. It’s not a spoiler to reveal that the proof exists, because there is never any doubt who the villains are in “Page Eight” — it’s there in black and white on Page 8.
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