Red Joan Review

Based on a novel by Jennie Rooney, Red Joan was inspired by the true story of Melita Norwood, an OAP who was revealed to be a Soviet spy. This ends up being the pretext for an uninspired World War II spy story.

In the year 2000 Joan Stanley (Judi Dench) was a widower living in the suburbs when she gets arrested by Special Branch. It is revealed the intelligence services have had a file on her since 1938. As a young woman (Sophie Cookson) when she was a student at Cambridge Joan was befriended by a group of left-wing students, worked in the British Atomic programme and was cultivated to become a Soviet agent.

The hook of the film was based on the Norwood case casting Dench in the main role. But this was no more than a framing device. The elderly Joan was basically questioned by the police, or more to the point the police detectives were reading the file to Joan and the film cuts to the past. The bulk of the film was focused on the younger Joan.

The storyline with the older Joan was superficial and could have been cut from the film without affecting it. There were attempts to look at how the revelation affected Joan’s relationship with her son (Ben Miles) and how he doesn’t know his mother as well as he thinks. And during the early part of the police questioning Joan was lying and telling half-truths. But this was just a token attempt.

The main story is a standard spy story – Joan makes friends, gets cultivated to be an agent and when she lands a job she becomes useful. The espionage activities were shown in a realistic light – Joan took pictures with a mini-camera, copied documents, and found ways to brings items into and out of the building without being noticed. There is even a little bit of social commentary because Joan was patronised for being a woman yet she is able to use these attitudes to her advantage. People were less likely to suspect women as spies and women could use their femininity to hide items.

Red Joan was also a relationship story. This isn’t unusual with World War Two set spy films – Black Book, Lust Caution, and Allied have all done this. There was plenty of material for a writer to mind like divided loyalties and questioning whether the love is genuine. However, Red Joan was nowhere near as interesting as those films. Joan is in the centre of a love triangle and she was drawn to socialism because of friendship instead of political conviction.

Melita Norwood was a die-hard communist and unapologetic about her spying. She was a no-nonsense type who said she did what she did to protect a system she believed in. Joan’s reasoning for giving nuclear secrets to the Soviet was to ensure world peace. At best the character and writers come off as naive. She is given information to one of the most brutal dictatorships in history and she didn’t even do it for ideological conviction, protecting the Soviet system, or even something as simple as being blackmailed. The filmmakers want to invoke sympathy towards Joan but no matter how she spins it Joan was a traitor.

Red Joan was directed by Trevor Nunn was has predominated worked as a theatre and TV director. This was his first feature film for 23 years. And it shows! The film looks flat throughout. It opens with the older Joan does chores around the house and the credits appear lazily on screen. Most of the film was just characters talking and it rarely goes out of first gear.

Red Joan was a film that wasted any potential it had, taking the dullest, least inspired route possible.