Daily Dialogue — April 27, 2019

Rudolf Abel: Standing there like that you reminded me of the man that used to come to our house when I was young. My father used to say: “watch this man’. So I did. Every time he came. And never once did he do anything remarkable.
James Donovan: And I remind you of him?
Rudolf Abel: This one time, I was at the age of your son, our house was overrun by partisan border guards. Dozens of them. My father was beaten, my mother was beaten, and this man, my father’s friend, he was beaten. And I watched this man. Every time they hit him, he stood back up again. So they hit him harder. Still he got back to his feet. I think because of this they stopped the beating. They let him live. ‘Stoikiy muzhik’. I remember them saying. ‘’. Which sort of means like uh, ‘standing man’… standing man…

— Bridge of Spies (2015), written by Matt Charman and Ethan Coen & Joel Coen

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Lawyer.

Trivia: Co-screenwriters, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, immediately dove in after Matt Charman’s first couple of screenplay drafts, immersing themselves in the language of the period and incorporating Tom Hanks’ persona into the character of James Donovan, expertly interweaving this remarkable experience in his life into a powerful story that captured the essence of the man. Steven Spielberg said: “Joel and Ethan got us very, very deep into the characters. They really instilled a sense of irony and a little bit of absurd humor, not absurd in the sense that movies can take license and be absurd, but that real life is absurd. They are great observers of real life, as we all know from their great august body of work, and were able to bring that to the story.” One theme woven throughout the texture and framework of the Coen Brothers’ screenplay, which struck a chord with Spielberg, was the notion that spies looked like everyone else. Spielberg explained: “It wasn’t just shadows and light and spies in a stereotypical way, but it was spies as people that we wouldn’t even think twice about, we wouldn’t even notice them to begin with, let alone figure out that they’re here to do a mission against our national security. Between Matt Charman and Joel (Coen) and Ethan Coen, I was in the hands of three wonderful storytellers.”

Dialogue On Dialogue: This story by Abel is about James Donovan, a lawyer who is thrust into the role of a diplomat-in-secret.