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Film: Farewell

Cast includes: Emir Kusturica (The Good Thief), Guillaume Canet (Tell No One), Willem Dafoe (Spider-Man 3), Fred Ward (Sweet Home Alabama), Alexandre Maria Lara (The City of Your Final Destination)
Director: Chistian Carion (Merry Christmas)
Genre: Espionage/Historic-based drama/Thriller
French, Russian and English with subtitles (2009)

In brief: Pierre wasn't cut out to be a spy. When Sergei shows up in the back seat of Pierre’s car, Pierre reluctantly agrees to deliver a list… a very valuable list, as it turns out. Sergei was none too happy about working with this French amateur, so it’s a good thing the first delivery will be the last. The year is 1981. Brezhnev is the Soviet leader, and there is little hope that life in the USSR will be anything but oppressive. But Sergei wants to see change, and he is willing to risk his life for it… plus the promise of some rewards from Paris… brandy, champagne, a Jonny Walkman… don’t you mean Sony Walkman?... and some tapes of Queen for his teenaged son.

As it turns out, the French amateur is the perfect courier, since he’s so low level he’s beyond suspicion… or so it seems. He is given the code name “Farewell” …and farewell is exactly what he wants to tell Sergei and the French secret service at every turn. The problem is that the information is just too good… Level 1. The soviets have obtained top-secret US intelligence, including our air defense procedures and codes. But Sergei is on the trail of the identities of the agents who are providing all this information to the KGB. So Pierre will have to continue as the go-between until another solution can be found. In the meantime, a bond is developing between the reluctant collaborators as they discuss French poetry and the curse of being an undercover agent… the lying.

Based loosely on actual events, Farewell jets between Moscow, Paris and Washington DC. Unlike with our latest US-Russian spy drama, the American public knew nothing about this breach in security when it happened. In fact, we were busy inventing fiction about how CIA and MI5 spies were outsmarting KGB spies. Ignorance is bliss! Unlike James Bond or Jason Bourne, these spies have no high-tech toys. Farewell has no high-speed car chases, no explosions and there is no ominous heart-thumping music… unless your heart races when you hear “We will. We will rock you.” Yet there’s suspense in the mundane reality of this story. Sergei is a lover of French poetry, and he recites passages from Alfred de Vigny’s “Death of the Wolf.” In the absence of the usual frills that punctuate the average spy-thrillers, “Death of the Wolf” becomes an ominous note. The danger’s not fiction… it’s real.

3 popped kernels

Popped kernels for creating suspense without all the special effects and tech toys... just real people and real history (adapted for entertainment value).

 

WWII… the start of a tradition

When FDR approved the Manhattan Project, to develop a weapon from the energy of the atom, the free flow of information among the world’s physicists came to an abrupt end. Russian physicists knew this meant only one thing… atomic research had become part of America’s war-weapon’s effort. Stalin wasn’t convinced of the viability of an atomic weapon, but he didn’t want to be outdone by the Western allies.

Stalin ordered the development of a USSR a-bomb, but was unwilling to commit adequate funding. In the absence of resources, the Russian team turned to the only resource they had… secret information from the Americans. Klaus Fuchs, who was on the Los Alamos team, became the most prolific secret agent of the era. So who was Fuchs’s Farewell? As it turns out… none other than the US military. Thanks to lend-lease, the US regularly sent planeloads of military equipment via the “Alaska-Siberia Air Ferry Route” from Great Falls, Montana to Siberia. Noticed, but never investigated… many shipments included “black boxes” of unidentified content.

Rather than benefiting from the abundance of black-box deliveries, Soviet physicists had to wade through tons of American ideas that ultimately didn’t pan out. But by 1949, they were finally able to catch up… to the surprise of the West. Beyond starting an arms race, the Manhattan Project started a spy race… which obviously continues to this day.

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