Conspiracy is a really, really good film, and extraordinarily entertaining for something that is essentially 90 minutes of middle management sitting round a table arguing about how to implement a strategy (and I know "entertaining" is an an inappropriate word to use in connection with the Shoah, but I mean it in the sense of watchable, never dull, and respects the audience's intelligence). Branagh is fantastic as Heydrich and Colin Firth is in it, too, and David Threlfall (who is MAGNIFICENT), and, of course, Bates, though he only has a very small role. I started a post about it, but it was too much effort to say what I wanted to say when I didn't think anybody else would have seen the film (Spoiler: they all agree to go along with Heydrich's plan. The tension is in the how he gets them to agree, rather than the whether).
I was quite happy with Bates in S1, when he was engaging in skirmishes with Thomas and keeping his mouth shut for what were at least Reasons, even if we didn't know what they were, but in S2 he just appears pathologically addicted to secrecy, because I cannot for the life of me see why he wouldn't discuss his wife's threat with Anna (or, for that matter, Lord Grantham although perhaps that was the sheer embarrassment factor of bringing up his daughter's sex life). And since the wife's threat seemed entirely non-credible anyway ("I'm going to reveal what half of London society already knows and everyone will believe me because I'm married to a disgraced ex-sergeant") it kind of seems like Bates must have wanted to go with her. It would be different if he'd felt some kind of responsibility for her - if she'd been mentally ill, or had cancer, or something that imposed an obligation on him - but she was just a cardboard cutout member of Team Evil.
Oh well, I suppose I don't watch it for the plots.
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Date: 2013-02-02 10:21 am (UTC)I was quite happy with Bates in S1, when he was engaging in skirmishes with Thomas and keeping his mouth shut for what were at least Reasons, even if we didn't know what they were, but in S2 he just appears pathologically addicted to secrecy, because I cannot for the life of me see why he wouldn't discuss his wife's threat with Anna (or, for that matter, Lord Grantham although perhaps that was the sheer embarrassment factor of bringing up his daughter's sex life). And since the wife's threat seemed entirely non-credible anyway ("I'm going to reveal what half of London society already knows and everyone will believe me because I'm married to a disgraced ex-sergeant") it kind of seems like Bates must have wanted to go with her. It would be different if he'd felt some kind of responsibility for her - if she'd been mentally ill, or had cancer, or something that imposed an obligation on him - but she was just a cardboard cutout member of Team Evil.
Oh well, I suppose I don't watch it for the plots.