Cast: Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard, Jared Harris
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Perhaps the best, most successfully realised scene in Allied is a mid-desert romp between its protagonists inside a ’40s geyser-car even as the sand from a simulated, recruited storm fills the vehicle, and thereby the frame, obscuring them from our view. There is desperation induced by the rather terminal nature of war; there is also love, but doomed, eventually, to be buried under the thick blanket of the sand that swirls around them — a perfect instance of sentiment being acted upon by material, visceral forces (the very foundation, thus, of great cinema).
In more manners than one, Allied is nostalgic about the classical war-film. Its central precept, much like all the films of the ’40s it models itself upon, in summary: in times of paranoia and deceit, love is the first, tragic casualty. The fictional universe of its characters is not as much an actual, historical war, but a film based on the actual, historical war. It is permeated therefore by an incredible self-awareness of its own artifice: the backgrounds are all painted, the actors all seem to be at a world-war themed fancy dress party, its locations are all studio-lots for hire, there is a lot of backlighting, the spoken, littered sentences in French sound like set-dressing and at any point in time, the generator may whirr down to let a stagehand walk into the frame. In short, an ode to the movies about the war made during wartime by the studios — incidentally, the most famous of which, Casablanca (1942), our present film refers to repeatedly, almost to the point of rut.
Much like the accidental meeting that propels the Michael Curtiz classic, Allied is kindled when Max meets Marion, a passerby resistance fighter. They collude on the assassination plot of a Nazi senior and as people who live through a shared danger tend to invariably do, fall in love. He asks her to marry her, she accepts. They move to the quieter, more sedate precinct of Hampstead in England, where a rural, backwater life carries on without much interruption (these parts are actually interesting — an action-thriller where nothing ever happens!). Soon, an upheaval. Max is informed Marion may be a German spy pretending to be a resistance fighter. He and his mates at the V-Section devise a few smart ones to entrap her, the ultimate one of which involves testing her skills on the piano (interesting: in The Pianist, a man’s skills with the instrument save him; here, she can literally not play to save her life). Then, declarations of love, a rescue mission, eternal love, etc.
Allied is most interesting when it stops pretending it has much to say, or contribute — it begins to resemble in these moments the sort of film one would show a fake film crew inside another film producing: a movie, movie. It is not a difficult conception that Steven Knight’s screenplay in itself is pregnant with possibilities of moments of swift deceit, day-to-day sleight, contests of wit — the installation, so to say, of a larger system of smoke-and-mirrors. A scene early into the film, set inside the office of a Nazi officer stationed in Morocco, betrays potential: Max has a city-wide reputation as a poker-player and the officer would like to test if this is a mere front or if there is actual ability. He hands Max a deck of cards to handle. The film stops and savours as he accepts this invitation: he shuffles the cards for an unnaturally long time, tossing them, cutting through them, spluttering them as if through a motor from one hand to another. A rare occasion, here, for the film elongates the moment to underline the absurdity of this brief performance — it is playful and for the effect it has on the officer, fulfilling.
The act of lying is so integral to cinema that one would presume any film constructed around one is on fertile grounds (think Suspicion, think Mr and Mrs Smith, think F for Fake) — and yet, Allied desires, however, for most of its duration, to be overtly sincere, humourless, with its greatest ambition to be incredibly dull and respectful.
This it accomplishes with commendation — through a combination of Zemeckis’ machinations to override Steven Knight’s screenplay (Knight’s Hummingbird and Locke are both great contemporary titles) and induce it with the gravity he thinks war-films deserve and the performances of its two veteran actors, who treat these parts as portals into the future: roles they think they will be remembered for 70 years later.
The writer is programmer, Lightcube Film Society
