The film hasn\u2019t changed. But the context certainly has.<\/p>\n
The latest Steve James documentary \u201cA Compassionate Spy,\u201d opening Friday at the Gene Siskel Film Center, made its world premiere late last summer at the Venice Film Festival.<\/p>\n
What has happened since then? \u201cOppenheimer.\u201d In the context of Christopher Nolan\u2019s blockbuster<\/a>, James\u2019 flawed, absorbing examination of physicist Theodore Hall, at 18 the youngest member of the Manhattan Project, now plays differently, more urgently, than it did a year ago.<\/p>\n Maybe I simply needed a second look at \u201cA Compassionate Spy\u201d to sort through more of what the filmmaker behind \u201cAbacus,\u201d \u201cLife Itself,\u201d \u201cHoop Dreams\u201d and so many more excellent nonfiction works was trying to achieve here. His film, a full, occasionally unresolved 100 minutes or so, works with a discreetly freewheeling mixture of fresh interview footage, primarily with Hall\u2019s widow, Joan Hall; dramatic reenactments, using actors, of the Halls\u2019 college-age courtship years at the University of Chicago after World War II; archival material ranging from jingoistic popular songs to excerpts from the 1943 pro-Soviet Hollywood adaptation of \u201cMission to Moscow\u201d; and other elements.<\/p>\n Seeing \u201cA Compassionate Spy\u201d in the context of \u201cOppenheimer,\u201d James\u2019 film serves as a fascinating complement \u2014 and in some ways, a corrective \u2014 to the Nolan blockbuster, which leaves the Hall affair out of things entirely.<\/p>\n In 1944, in collaboration with longtime friend and fellow Communist Saville Sax and working through Soviet operatives, Hall fed crucial information to the Soviets regarding the Manhattan Project\u2019s development of the implosion bomb. A year earlier, recruited out of Harvard University for Oppenheimer\u2019s secret atomic project, teenaged Hall felt enormous moral qualms about the apparent, and then proven, military purpose for the bomb.<\/p>\n He wasn\u2019t alone. He felt the Soviets should be privy to the technical knowledge, to keep the world from U.S. dominance, and possible nuclear catastrophe. Post-WWII, with the FBI lurking, for years, in the corners of their lives, the Halls kept quiet during the worst of the Red Menace era. The execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg came and went; meantime, according to \u201cBombshell\u201d co-author Joseph Albright (interviewed here), \u201cthe Rosenbergs were small fish compared to Ted Hall.\u201d<\/p>\n Much of the documentary draws from on-camera interviews Hall agreed to in 1998, the year before he died. The freshest material in \u201cA Compassionate Spy\u201d comes from James\u2019 2019 interviews with Joan Hall, and members of her family, along with separate interviews with the children of Hall\u2019s longtime friend Sax.<\/p>\n The dramatic reenactments are not this movie\u2019s strong suit. Even with some striking work from Lucy Zukaitis as young Joan, the UChicago scenes, along with imagined scenes of young Hall at Los Alamos, land in an uncertain stylistic area \u2014partly scripted dialogue, possibly improvised, somewhat stilted either way. It\u2019s something new, at least to this degree, for director James, and it\u2019s best taken here as a trial run for the future.<\/p>\n What\u2019s effective and touching in \u201cA Compassionate Spy\u201d relates directly to the satisfaction of getting to know Joan Hall, a terrifically vital and reflective presence. We get, among other things, a glimpse of a long-lived marriage hounded by secrets and surveillance, but an abiding mutual trust. And like \u201cOppenheimer,\u201d James\u2019 film ends with a sobering warning about the cost, and the probable endgame, of an eternal nuclear arms race being run by more and more nations. Was Oppenheimer right in hoping, against all reasonable political hope, that sharing atomic developments with allies and enemies might\u2019ve rerouted our planet\u2019s narrative? Was Hall, acting on his political beliefs as well as his conscience, right, too?<\/p>\n ____<\/p>\n \u201cA Compassionate Spy\u201d \u2014 3 stars (out of 4)<\/strong> <\/p>\n No MPA rating (some language and horrific imagery)<\/p>\n Running time: 1:41<\/p>\n How to watch: Aug. 4-17 at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St.; www.siskelfilmcenter.org<\/a>. Also streaming on Apple TV Plus, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube and other platforms.<\/p>\n ____<\/p>\n