According
to Michael Frayn’s play Copenhagen, Werner
Heisenberg’s commitment to Germany’s atomic bomb program was an ambiguous
uncertainty that bedeviled the great Danish physicist Niels Bohr years after
the war ended. An American OSS agent had to make that determination based on a
few hours observation and a brief conversation. He was not a physicist, he was
a professional baseball player. Nicholas Dawidoff’s bestselling chronicle of
Morris “Moe” Berg’s WWII service is now dramatized in Ben Lewin’s The Catcher was a Spy, which screens
during this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Berg
was a member of the Boston Red Sox, but please do not hold that against him. He
was a dependable but not spectacular journeyman player, who held roster spots
on several teams. He spoke several languages, including German and Italian, and
regularly read foreign policy journals. As a result, he had the foresight to
film Tokyo harbor during a 1934 exhibition tour, well before Pearl Harbor. Once
the war started, Berg’s talents and his 16mm film attracted the attention of “Wild
Bill” Donovan and the OSS, the CIA’s predecessor agency.
Eager
for field work, Berg gets his chance when Donovan orders him to prevent the
retreating Germans from abducting or killing Italian scientist Edoardo Amaldi, with
the help of Dutch physicist Samuel Goudsmit and Major Robert Furman, the Manhattan
Project’s intelligence chief (who would later oversee construction of the
Pentagon). However, their Italian mission will lead to a trickier assignment in
Zurich. Berg is to meet with Heisenberg, assess the status of the German Atomic
program, determine whether Heisenberg is trying to advance or hinder its
progress, and if the former proves true, kill him.
Without
question, Berg is one of the great, under-heralded figures of World War II
history. Arguably, he is the sort of renaissance man you just do not find anymore.
He was also a “confirmed bachelor,” which led to plenty of speculation that
Robert Rodat’s screenplay continues to stoke. Be that as it may, the film also nicely
captures the intriguing milieu of the Donovan-era OSS.
Paul
Rudd is does some of his best work bringing out the personal contradictions of
the deeply patriotic and borderline-savant-like Berg. He also develops some ambiguously
potent chemistry with Sienna Miller in the otherwise under-written role of Berg’s
lover, Estella Huni. Catcher is also
packed with colorful and convincing supporting turns, including Paul Giamatti
as the humanistic Goudsmit, Mark Strong as the evasive Heisenberg, and the
great Tom Wilkinson as Paul Scherrer, the Swiss anti-Nazi physicist, who
brokered the meeting between Berg and Heisenberg.
It
is just tremendously refreshing to see a film that celebrates American intelligence
operatives as heroes. It also thinks quite highly of scientists and soldiers.
It is a fascinating true story and a well-crafted period production. Very
highly recommended for fans of historical intrigue (like Bridge of Spies), The Catcher
was a Spy screens again this morning (1/25) and Saturday (1/27) in Park
City and Sunday (1/28) in Salt Lake, as part of the 2018 Sundance Film
Festival.
