Official Secrets

[peter]

Official Secrets is a film in which Keira Knightly plays the GCHQ worker Katherine Gunn who, following her leaking of a memo from the American Secret Service asking them to perform an illegal surveillance of United Nations personnel prior to votes pertaining to the legality of the second Iraq war, was charged by the UK state with breaking the Official Secrets Act.

Knightly is very good in the role and the tension of the story is maintained throughout, not least because she is married to an asylum seeking husband of Middle Eastern origin, who you just know is going to become a target for retributive action by the State in order to punish her. The presentation of the story is by necessity, very one sided - whistleblower good, big evil State bad - but this is at the end of the day a film made to entertain. The nuances of the rights and wrongs of state employees in the security services breaking faith with the instructions they are given are not really considered - this is more a bald telling of the story from one perspective only and good as it is, I suspect an equally compelling story could be told of the other side of the case should it be wanted to.

Ralph Fiennes makes a slightly unusual appearance as the Liberty Council who is instructed to defend her - unusual in that it is hard to get a handle on the character he is playing, whether he is a cold fish or deeply committed man of the Law. Also, I found his accent slightly odd, but having said this, none of it in any way spoiled either his performance or indeed the film.

The story progresses over the twelve months that the case took in order to come to trial (longer than the war that Gunn's leak failed to prevent lasted) and it is perhaps this aspect that most remains with one after the film has ended. To what lengths were our countries prepared to go in order to ensure that they got the war that they always intended to have - and to what lengths were they prepared to go to punish those who might have stood in their way. And of course the final big question - was the war ever.....ever....... legal.

History will judge our nations on this, but in the meantime this film is a good starting point from which to begin thinking about what it is that we do in the world.