Friday, December 13, 1996
****
Spellbinding Secret Agent is full of surprises
Written and directed by Christopher Hampton.
Starring Bob Hoskins, Patricia Arquette and Gerard Depardieu.
At Carlton Theatres.
By Susan Walker - Toronto Star Entertainment Reporter
In keeping with his role as an underground terrorist, Robin Williams' identity is not even mentioned in the credits of The Secret Agent. His appearance in the film is just the first surprise as Christopher Hampton's adaptation of Joseph Conrad's 1907 novel unreels.
This dark and grimy fiction of political intrigue, social realism and sibling love would not have been many directors' first choice for a movie. Hampton turns it into a spellbinder, even for those who know the book.
Patricia Arquette playing a Victorian housewife living in London's Soho district will cause some viewers to rub their eyes in disbelief. The star of True Romance, Ed Wood, Holy Matrimony and Beyond Rangoon turns out a highly credible accent and performance.
Conrad himself wanted to adapt The Secret Agent to the stage, perhaps seeing that at the centre of the story is a drama of what some people would do for love.
That is, as opposed to what some would do for politics.
Adolf Verloc is the secret agent of the title. Bob Hoskins makes the perfect embodiment of this character, a sincere but hapless type whose activities as an agent provocateur for the Russian embassy are about as successful as his anarchist politics.
"Pretty corpulent for an anarchist, aren't you?" asks the Russian consul who has summoned the nerve-wracked Verloc to an accountability session at the London embassy. You know his feet don't touch the floor when he's invited to sit on a brocaded chaise.
Vladimir, played with equal parts vanity and evil by Eddie Izzard, directs Verloc to pull some outrage, a bombing, he suggests, if he wants to stay on the payroll. His mission is to assist the Russians at an international conference to make the English get tough with political refugees - and send theirs home to Czarist justice.
The terribly botched job - to set off a bomb in the Greenwich Observatory - makes Verloc a fugitive. His unknown accomplice is blown to bits. Such an incident actually occurred in 1894, when a man called Martial Bourdin was mutilated and killed trying to set off a bomb on a hill near the observatory.
Verloc's wife, Winnie, we soon find out, has married the unprepossessing stationer and porn purveyor to ensure the care of Stevie, her younger brother. Stevie is what the Victorians called "a degenerate," mentally slow and emotionally unbalanced, but endearing to all, including Verloc.
The innocent moves that set in motion a tragic tale of political and police corruption, murder, theft and suicide are centred on Stevie.
Christian Bale (Portrait Of A Lady) portrays the blighted brother, with a repeated hunching over and bowing of his head. Gazing with love and pity on family and horses alike, he is constantly wringing a handkerchief.
Gerard Depardieu is Ossipon, an anarchist cad whose best actions involve wooing women for their money. Jim Broadbent, a British comic actor, gets the job of Chief Inspector Heat, a self- satisfied, self-aggrandizing cop.
His superior, the only character in the story motivated by a sense of justice, is the Assistant Commissioner, performed by Julian Wadham (The Madness Of King George). Throw in Elizabeth Spriggs (Mrs. Jennings in Sense And Sensibility) and you have a cast that could do miracles with any script.
Hampton's script is worthy of the them. He brings out the evil at the heart of the novel in the Williams character, known only as The Professor. He is the perfect anarchist, a man with contempt for humanity. Hampton is wonderfully faithful to the book, bringing alive the dimly lit, muddy streets of 1880s London. An extraordinary soundtrack composed by Philip Glass completes the mood.
