There’s a scene in Bridge Of Spies, Spielberg’s Cold War epic, where the lawyer James B. Donovan, played by Tom Hanks, is confronted by a CIA agent. The agent wants Donovan to break attorney client privilege and report on his client, Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, asserting that “We don’t have a rule book here.” Mr. Donovan refuses, replying that the rule book is the one thing that makes us all Americans regardless of our backgrounds or ethnicities. The rule book is the Constitution, Donovan states, before telling the agent to leave him alone to do his job, and walking out.
Jim Donovan as portrayed in this movie is a good guy. A Boy Scout. One who follows the rules and does not compromise his morals even when profoundly challenged, threatened, reviled and endangered. He acts courageously and generously against terrible odds, alone. And he emerges victorious, saving people’s lives. He is proven right. We the audience share the journey with him, seeing him, even when in the story, he is seen mainly only by himself. A man of principle. A “standing man,” as Abel names him.
We need people like this Jim Donovan. We should celebrate that sort of character. We should encourage people to behave that way. We should ask it from ourselves. Even if we don’t do it nearly as dramatically as he did, we have opportunities every day to choose to be good. Choose to be virtuous, and generous. Choose to follow the “rule book.” Even while some seek to shred it.
How similar is Tom Hanks / Spielberg’s portrayal to the real James B. Donovan? I don’t know, but certainly some of the headline achievements are accurate. The movie did take license with a number of details, covered in Wikipedia. That bothers me somewhat as it seems unnecessary and a bit irresponsible, but I still love the movie. The acting is superb throughout, the characters unforgettable.
The spy, Abel, played by Mark Rylance, has some of the best lines. I often remind myself of his reply, when asked if he never worries: “Would it help?” It’s a perfect answer. A statement as a question. Real serenity.
Worrying doesn’t help, but it can be motivating, I suppose. To work one’s way out of worrying by taking appropriate action, where possible. But as for things truly out of our hands, worrying is just worrying. Unproductive and unpleasant. Knowing the difference, between things we can change and things we can’t, is an ongoing challenge, isn’t it? The Serenity Prayer addresses this directly, and I find it a powerful tool. I’m not actively “in the program,” but I know it well and have many friends and colleagues in said rooms. Take what you need and leave the rest behind, is the sage advice, and I need the Serenity Prayer sometimes.
To choose to be good, to oneself and others. To make that choice and act on it, daily, seems so basic and simple, and yet it absolutely is a choice. I don’t think any of us get all the way through life without sinning, for lack of a better word. I’m grateful that my sins were not violent, were not felonies, were not deliberately cruel. That would be hard to live with, as I have an active and loud conscience. That’s not unusual, I think most people are built that way. Hell, if we weren’t, then civilization would be impossible.
Civilization is deeply challenged, now. The USA in multiple simultaneous existential crises, the world as well. We were, as the curse goes, born in interesting times. Still, I think there’s a James B. Donovan somewhere in each of us, and this gives me something resembling hope. Toward the end of the movie, Donovan tells Francis Gary Powers that it doesn’t matter what people think he did. “You know what you did,” he tells him. In Donovan’s estimation, that was the thing that mattered.