![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Cambridge Spies re-watch, Episode 2
Previously on Cambridge Spies, there was a waiter strike and romances and running around in dark alleys wearing fedoras, and a bit of lying and heartbreak, but all for a good cause. And then everyone overthrew Hitler and Franco and global capitalism and lived happily every after with their respective partner(s), the end.
Oh, right, this is based on actual things that happened. Dammit! Why you gotta harsh my squee, history?
This episode mainly involves Burgess and Philby’s competition to see whose life can suck more, with added appearances by Otto the Soviet contact (he has a name!), Franco, and the Queen of England. But the main star is Angst. There is a lot of angst in practically every scene.
Otto tells the guys that they must become everything they hate. To undermine the establishment, they must become it. So right at the end of the last episode, Philby had to dump Litzi because his marriage to a communist compromised his cover as an upstanding fucktwit. Naturally, Burgess doesn’t get to keep his love interest either. And it’s massively depressing to watch. The boys must all adopt right-wing personas, to the point of appearing to be fascist sympathizers (remember, Britain hasn’t entered the war yet, and many in the British establishment liked Hitler a good deal more than they liked Stalin). And Julian Bell, idealistic anti-fascist, poet, and too good for this sinful world, can’t know about it. Burgess acts like a downright ass to him, refuses to donate to the Spanish Republican cause, and publicly abandons his left-wing politics. Oh, and to twist the knife even more, pretends that he’s involved with Blunt.
This cuts right to the core of the appeal of spy literature and movies for me, which is the idea of burying your true self so far beneath all of the lies you must live on a daily basis that you start to lose sight of who you actually are—and doing it all for a good reason, until you forget what that good reason is.
Burgess copes with his loneliness like we all would, which is getting shitfaced drunk and trying to pick up a cop with a wide stance in a washroom stall. This gets him arrested.
Like I said, though, Burgess is awesome even when he’s utterly depressed. So he throws himself hilariously into his new role as a not-gay, not-communist conservative. This entails a brilliant job interview with the BBC that you really just have to see. Anyway, they like his excruciatingly boring and awful ideas, so from there, he and Philby are off to infiltrate the British fascists.
Oh yes, apparently the Prince of Wales was a fascist, and thinking that his new friends are fascists as well, invites Blunt for tea with the Queen. As one does. Everyone seems to have conveniently forgotten that just a few years ago, these guys were streaking the campus and agitating for an international proletarian uprising. It turns out that British intelligence is the kind of intelligence that’s not, because having convinced the fascists to give him information, Burgess has zero problem handing over said information to MI6 to earn their trust. He’s clearly having a good time with it, which is nice to see.
Philby is concerned about Burgess’ inability to not act like a gay communist for long enough to get his public indecency charges dropped—a criminal record does not make him very useful to Moscow—but it turns out that MI6 can help there too. They go to Otto with this exciting news, and Otto suddenly gets quite grim. None of this espionage was actually his idea. He admits that it’s completely badass, but reminds the boys that they can’t just go off and their own and do cool shit, because it’s dangerous. Aww, Otto has a heart after all! He’s basically Team Dad, at which point I remember what happens to him and brace myself for more angst.
Everything is going according to plan—Burgess is officially with the BBC and unofficially working for MI6, Philby pulls some strings with his new fascist friends to get Maclean a job at the Foreign Office, where he’s able to steal files under the watchful eye of a woman who is also a Soviet spy, and Blunt hangs out with the Queen. Who has Opinions. Some are political but for the most part they relate to moustaches and the sorts of men who wear them. She asserts that men with moustaches have something to hide, and asks the moustacheless Blunt whether he’s a ponce or a spy. He replies that he’s a bit of both, then hooks up with a moustache-wielding ponce on his way to report to Otto that the Queen is a ZOMG raging alcoholic who can drink him under the table.
God, I love this show.
But I did promise angst, and history delivers: Julian Bell is killed driving an ambulance in Spain. And Burgess never got the chance to tell him that he loved him and also that he was only pretending to be right-wing to aid the communist cause. Shortly thereafter, Philby gets sent off to Spain himself—but as a journalist. Because there isn’t already enough free-floating angst, he’s under strict orders from Moscow to write reports biased in favour of the fascists. It’s like everything good and wonderful that they believed in at the beginning gets twisted and made horrible. To help his cover, he sleeps with an actual fascist sympathizer, a woman who really gets it up for Nazi uniforms. He pretty much lies back and thinks of Russia.
And then it gets really nasty. Otto sends Burgess to Spain as well, to send a message to Philby. Franco likes Philby so much that he’s personally going to give him a medal. As in they will be in the same room. Philby actually has an opportunity to assassinate Franco, save the Spanish Republic, and maybe even avert WWII. The catch, obviously, is that if he does this he won’t make it out alive and the rest of the spy ring is completely screwed. But obviously it’s worth it: one dead spy and three imprisoned ones, in exchange for millions of lives.
Knowing bloody well what happens, I watched this for the second time hoping he’d at least give it a shot. But alas, this isn’t history written by Tarantino (note to Tarantino: Please make a movie about the Spanish Civil War), so he wusses out and has to shake Franco’s hand. It is excruciating to watch. He goes back to Burgess, brokenly confesses that he couldn’t do it, and Burgess—because he’s the most awesome person ever—hugs him and tells him that given a choice, it’s better to betray your country than to betray your friends.
I’m fine you guys, really, just something in my eye. Burgess gives Philby a picture of Bell that he brought with him and asks him to bury it on Spanish soil.
We’re not done running the gauntlet of angst, though, because this is the Spanish Civil War, goddamn it, and Philby’s luck is such that the Germans bomb Guernica while he’s there. He has to report on it. This includes looking a woman who has just lost her young son to the bombing in the eye and telling her that Hitler had nothing to do with it. Then he writes that the Republicans bombed themselves to get sympathy. When he buries the photo of Bell in Guernica, you get a sense that he envies the guy a little. Ouch.
But this is all for a good cause, right? Right?
Except that Otto, he of the ruthless pragmatism, is being recalled to Moscow. Why? The plan to assassinate Franco was Stalin’s idea, and Stalin never has a bad idea. And by “recalled to Moscow,” he means “shot in the fucking head.”
As for Stalin, he goes and signs the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Which means that the boys, who got into the spy game not because they love Stalin but because they hate fascism, now find themselves on the side of the fascists. Oh, and if they get caught, they are extra-screwed because it’s one thing to be traitors when no one wants to get political, but it’s quite another to be traitors in a time of war.
Hands up if you’re now torrenting this.
Oh, right, this is based on actual things that happened. Dammit! Why you gotta harsh my squee, history?
This episode mainly involves Burgess and Philby’s competition to see whose life can suck more, with added appearances by Otto the Soviet contact (he has a name!), Franco, and the Queen of England. But the main star is Angst. There is a lot of angst in practically every scene.
Otto tells the guys that they must become everything they hate. To undermine the establishment, they must become it. So right at the end of the last episode, Philby had to dump Litzi because his marriage to a communist compromised his cover as an upstanding fucktwit. Naturally, Burgess doesn’t get to keep his love interest either. And it’s massively depressing to watch. The boys must all adopt right-wing personas, to the point of appearing to be fascist sympathizers (remember, Britain hasn’t entered the war yet, and many in the British establishment liked Hitler a good deal more than they liked Stalin). And Julian Bell, idealistic anti-fascist, poet, and too good for this sinful world, can’t know about it. Burgess acts like a downright ass to him, refuses to donate to the Spanish Republican cause, and publicly abandons his left-wing politics. Oh, and to twist the knife even more, pretends that he’s involved with Blunt.
This cuts right to the core of the appeal of spy literature and movies for me, which is the idea of burying your true self so far beneath all of the lies you must live on a daily basis that you start to lose sight of who you actually are—and doing it all for a good reason, until you forget what that good reason is.
Burgess copes with his loneliness like we all would, which is getting shitfaced drunk and trying to pick up a cop with a wide stance in a washroom stall. This gets him arrested.
Like I said, though, Burgess is awesome even when he’s utterly depressed. So he throws himself hilariously into his new role as a not-gay, not-communist conservative. This entails a brilliant job interview with the BBC that you really just have to see. Anyway, they like his excruciatingly boring and awful ideas, so from there, he and Philby are off to infiltrate the British fascists.
Oh yes, apparently the Prince of Wales was a fascist, and thinking that his new friends are fascists as well, invites Blunt for tea with the Queen. As one does. Everyone seems to have conveniently forgotten that just a few years ago, these guys were streaking the campus and agitating for an international proletarian uprising. It turns out that British intelligence is the kind of intelligence that’s not, because having convinced the fascists to give him information, Burgess has zero problem handing over said information to MI6 to earn their trust. He’s clearly having a good time with it, which is nice to see.
Philby is concerned about Burgess’ inability to not act like a gay communist for long enough to get his public indecency charges dropped—a criminal record does not make him very useful to Moscow—but it turns out that MI6 can help there too. They go to Otto with this exciting news, and Otto suddenly gets quite grim. None of this espionage was actually his idea. He admits that it’s completely badass, but reminds the boys that they can’t just go off and their own and do cool shit, because it’s dangerous. Aww, Otto has a heart after all! He’s basically Team Dad, at which point I remember what happens to him and brace myself for more angst.
Everything is going according to plan—Burgess is officially with the BBC and unofficially working for MI6, Philby pulls some strings with his new fascist friends to get Maclean a job at the Foreign Office, where he’s able to steal files under the watchful eye of a woman who is also a Soviet spy, and Blunt hangs out with the Queen. Who has Opinions. Some are political but for the most part they relate to moustaches and the sorts of men who wear them. She asserts that men with moustaches have something to hide, and asks the moustacheless Blunt whether he’s a ponce or a spy. He replies that he’s a bit of both, then hooks up with a moustache-wielding ponce on his way to report to Otto that the Queen is a ZOMG raging alcoholic who can drink him under the table.
God, I love this show.
But I did promise angst, and history delivers: Julian Bell is killed driving an ambulance in Spain. And Burgess never got the chance to tell him that he loved him and also that he was only pretending to be right-wing to aid the communist cause. Shortly thereafter, Philby gets sent off to Spain himself—but as a journalist. Because there isn’t already enough free-floating angst, he’s under strict orders from Moscow to write reports biased in favour of the fascists. It’s like everything good and wonderful that they believed in at the beginning gets twisted and made horrible. To help his cover, he sleeps with an actual fascist sympathizer, a woman who really gets it up for Nazi uniforms. He pretty much lies back and thinks of Russia.
And then it gets really nasty. Otto sends Burgess to Spain as well, to send a message to Philby. Franco likes Philby so much that he’s personally going to give him a medal. As in they will be in the same room. Philby actually has an opportunity to assassinate Franco, save the Spanish Republic, and maybe even avert WWII. The catch, obviously, is that if he does this he won’t make it out alive and the rest of the spy ring is completely screwed. But obviously it’s worth it: one dead spy and three imprisoned ones, in exchange for millions of lives.
Knowing bloody well what happens, I watched this for the second time hoping he’d at least give it a shot. But alas, this isn’t history written by Tarantino (note to Tarantino: Please make a movie about the Spanish Civil War), so he wusses out and has to shake Franco’s hand. It is excruciating to watch. He goes back to Burgess, brokenly confesses that he couldn’t do it, and Burgess—because he’s the most awesome person ever—hugs him and tells him that given a choice, it’s better to betray your country than to betray your friends.
I’m fine you guys, really, just something in my eye. Burgess gives Philby a picture of Bell that he brought with him and asks him to bury it on Spanish soil.
We’re not done running the gauntlet of angst, though, because this is the Spanish Civil War, goddamn it, and Philby’s luck is such that the Germans bomb Guernica while he’s there. He has to report on it. This includes looking a woman who has just lost her young son to the bombing in the eye and telling her that Hitler had nothing to do with it. Then he writes that the Republicans bombed themselves to get sympathy. When he buries the photo of Bell in Guernica, you get a sense that he envies the guy a little. Ouch.
But this is all for a good cause, right? Right?
Except that Otto, he of the ruthless pragmatism, is being recalled to Moscow. Why? The plan to assassinate Franco was Stalin’s idea, and Stalin never has a bad idea. And by “recalled to Moscow,” he means “shot in the fucking head.”
As for Stalin, he goes and signs the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Which means that the boys, who got into the spy game not because they love Stalin but because they hate fascism, now find themselves on the side of the fascists. Oh, and if they get caught, they are extra-screwed because it’s one thing to be traitors when no one wants to get political, but it’s quite another to be traitors in a time of war.
Hands up if you’re now torrenting this.