Farewell: Review

"Farewell" by Christian Carion is a mesmerizing Cold War spy film. The film touches on acts of espionage by a Soviet colonel named Sergei Grigoriev in Moscow during 1981. Grigoriev played superbly by Emir Kusturica is a fascinating character. He believes in the tenets of Communism, but like Lenin argues that in order for a system to be free it must be continually destroyed and rebuilt in order for it to remain pure. Kusturica is a fabulous actor and was fabulous in Neil Jordan's, "The Good Thief." He has an unusual look and simply from his eyes he reveals so much without saying anything.

Kusturica in Farewell plays a Soviet who is responsible for dismantiling the system which he has devoted his life to. His rationality for this move is he believes he will make the U.S.S.R. better for his son. Being a colonel he has access to the KGB archives. From this location he compiles data, which is prized by the Reagan administration. There are parallels to Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn in "The Falcon and the Snowman." Kusturica in Moscow steals the blueprints of the Soviet space program, reveals a paper trail that accounts for 40% of the Soviet defense budget that has been spent on espionage, uncovers the whereabouts of nuclear warhead locations in both America and the U.S.S.R. as well as Reagan's travel itinerary, Reagan's food service, and the blueprints of Air Force One. The intermediary between the CIA and Kusturica is a French engineer working in Moscow. Played on point by Guillame Canet. Canet is a reluctant intermediary who really doesn't realize the extent to which he is involved. Kusturica and Canet both have to lie to their families about their espionage involvement. There are many parrallels to "Farewell" and "The Lives of Others" in both films relationships and privacy are abused by the nature of a totalitarian state. "Farwell" is one of the first Cold War films to have actors playing world leaders Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.
Fred Ward plays Reagan as a cowboy president who constantly watching a scene from John Ford's "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" his reason for watching this scene repeatedly is the scene reveals that John Wayne not Jimmy Stewart killed Liberty Valance. In "Farwell" this a fantastic way of revealing Cold War policy. Arguably it reveals that the Soviet Union with help from the DST dismanteled itself. The Cold War was not won by Ronald Reagan and his Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall speech, but instead ruined from the interior. Unfortunately Mikhail Gorbachev has one scene in the entire film and it reveals very little. There were many scenes of Reagan, but sadly the actor portraying Gorbachev was not utilized to his potential. My biggest criticism of "Farwell" was the lack of Gorbachev. In my personal opinion Mikhail Gorbachev was the last of the mohicans. He was the last Soviet Premier who believed in the ideology. Like Kusturica he thought communism would last forever. Gorbachev felt that if Soviets were given their choice between democracy and communism that they would still choose
communism. Gorbachev wrote his doctoral thesis on how Soviet grain production was superior to American agricultural methods. However, Gorbachev with Pereistroika wrecked the Soviet Union. In America he is championed as a great leader and peace maker. In Russia he is seen as the man who wrecked the Empire. Gorbachev refused to shoot to maintain empire and this in my opinion is why the Berlin wall really fell. In Tianemmenan Square the response of the army of the People's Republic of China kept the nation under the communist umbrella. Without terror communism cannot work.
"Farwell" is a good film and is responsible for putting many fresh ideas on the struggle to understand the Cold War in a motion picture. However, Gorbachev needed to play a more central role in the film in order to balance the amount of screen time Fred Ward had as Reagan.
The look, pace, and tone of the film is on point.