Red Joan

 Red Joan 2018

• Director: Trevor Nunn
• Seen by this director: King Lear, Twelfth Night, Lady Jane, Macbeth
• Based on the book by Jennie Rooney
• Cast: Judi Dench, Sophie Cookson, Nina Sosanya, Tereza Srbova, Freddie Gaminara, Tom Hughes, Ben Miles, Stephen Campbell Moore
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Judi Dench – Victoria and Abdul, The Hollow Crown, Spectre, Hotel Marigold 2, Vicious, Philomena, Hotel Marigold, My Week with Marilyn, Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides, Jane Eyre, Cranford, Nine, Quantum of Silence, Notes on a Scandal, Casino Royale, Mrs Henderson Presents, Ladies in Lavender, Die Another Day, The Shipping News, Chocolat, The World is Not Enough, Tea with Mussolini, Shakespeare in Love, Tomorrow Never Dies, Mrs Brown, Hamlet, Golden Eye, Middlemarch, Henry V, A Handful of Dust, A Room with a View, Macbeth
• Sophie Cookson – Snow White Huntsman Winter’s War
• Nina Sosanya – Last Tango in Halifax, Hustle, Bonekicker, Doctor Who, Much Ado about Nothing Retold, Manderlay, Love Actually
• Tom Hughes – About Time, Dancing on the Edge, The Hollow Crown
• Ben Miles – The Hollow Crown, Woman in Gold, V for Vendetta, Hustle, Keep the Aspidistra Flying
• Stephen Campbell Moore – The Lady in the Van, Johnny English Reborn, Amazing Grace, Hustle, Bright Young Things
• Why? Judi Dench
• Seen: 15 May 2021      

       A nondescript elderly woman, Mrs Stanley (Dench) is arrested at her modest middle-class home. The charge: espionage.

       In 1938 Joan (Cookson) is studying physics at Cambridge. She becomes friends with the flamboyant Sophie (Srbova) and Leo (Hughes), refugees from Germany, and Jewish. Joan quickly joins them in the communist movement though she doesn’t join the party herself. It is an era of belief in a brighter future and the leading star of the Soviet Union.

       Alternating between the present as Mrs Stanley is plunged into the judicial nightmare of police interrogation and her own memories, and the 40’s, when Joan is recruited into top secret research into developing the atom bomb before the Germans and also to prevent the US from having a monopoly. And her now ex-comrades try to recruit her into sharing the research with British allies, the USSR.

       The moral and political dilemmas are very sticky indeed which leads to a suspenseful and gripping film.

       Unsurprisingly, Dench excels as Red Joan. The whole cast is good. 

4* of 5