Our Kind of Traitor: On UK Screens May 13

There’s been a long wait for the whirlwind of projects Damian did while on haitus from Homeland and right after wrapping up his stint. We just learned that one of those long-awaited projects, John Le Carre’s Our Kind of Traitor, will be in cinemas May 13 in the UK. The preview was released last week, and, boy, it sure does look to be a fun ride of a spy drama. Great talent on board with Ewan MacGregor, Stellan Skarsgard, Naomie Harris, and, of course, Damian Lewis in the role of British intelligence fixer Hector Meredith.

I’ve been listening to the audiobook since this news came out and been bemused to hear the role of Hector, written as a weathered investigator well into his 50’s, read in a gruff no-nonsense baritone. Happy to report, as gruff as he may sound, they didn’t age Damian to fit the role, and, though he’s sporting vintage horn-rimmed glasses and may be pulling a specific MI6 inflection of a British accent, he is otherwise undisguised. Have a look at the preview here. And read on as we revisit some observations about the story, the characters, and some behind the scenes goodness.

Though I’ve always appreciated a good thriller on screen, I must confess, it’s not a genre I regularly read. Of those who do read him, it’s common knowledge that John Le Carre is known for his stories of Cold War espionage. Born David John Moore Cornwell, Le Carre worked as a spy himself for the British Secret service before acquiring his pen name and marching forth on a long and prolific career of writing what he knew best. When the decades long stand-off with Russia ended, Le Carre found himself in a world where not all bad guys could be cast as Russians. Like a real estate mogul at the crash of the housing market, Le Carre had to change gears. With this story, however, he’s back to Russia, and this story has been described as a tale of Western collusion in Russian mafioso hijinks. A YT commenter made the intriguing observation: “there are no ”good guys” in John Le Carre books, there are just bad guys, even more bad guys and naive guys who become bad guys along the way.” Like!

Till the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991 and beyond, Le Carre’s work is best described as telling the tales of intrigue and subterfuge among various “unheroic political functionaries aware of the moral ambiguity of their work and engaged in psychological more than physical drama.” Wikipedia also tells us that in Le Carre’s novels, “much of the conflict is internal, rather than external and visible” and that, even though, his genre is ostensibly about bad guy vs good guy, he often paints his worlds with strokes obscuring the lines around conventional morality. (Hm, I’m learning more about Le Carre, I’m thinking I may need some time laying on a beach somewhere to give his novels another chance!)

Le Carre wrote Our Kind of Traitor in 2010 and it features a Russian character very much cast in the new palette of a post-Cold War world. Even NYT’s book critic Machiko Kakutani had some nice things to say about the book: Innocents Caught in a Web of Intrigue.

In short, Damian plays a frustrated spy type, Hector Meredith, who is at odds with how to manuever with his old rule book in this new world. Ewan MacGregor plays a bumbling professor, Peregrine “Perry” Makepiece, who’s taken in by Dima, played by Saargard, who is hopelessly and inextricably tied to the Russian mob.. In my brief foray into the novel, some themes flew off the page: capitalism can be just as corrupt, in just as deeply nefarious ways, as the economic theories it has supplanted. And: Russia never died, it was reborn as a somewhat new and as yet not fully dissectable creature, still as globally influential as ever, and in ways it never was before.

Curious, the timing of the release of this film, and not to put the cart before the horse, given the rumors flying around, but here’s one collage that I feel compelled to title King OO7.

Now for some peeks behind the scenes.

Finally: Seems the two Etonites on cast had some hosiery-focused fun in the make-up trailer whilst filming this movie. Posted on both Ewan McGregor’s instagram and Damian Lewis’ Twitter: One (or two) of these feet festooned in stripy socks is Damian’s! Spoiler: Damianista did the detective work a while back.