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phantom-le6 · 3 months

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Film Review - Operation Mincemeat

For our next cinema release of 2022, we’re looking back into World War 2-based films as we check out Operation Mincemeat…

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

In 1943, the United Kingdom is entrenched in World War II. Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu, a Jewish barrister, remains in England while his wife Iris and their children travel to safety in the United States. Montagu takes a break from practising law when he is appointed to the Twenty Committee. His secretary, Hester Leggett, comes with him.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill has promised the US that the Allies will invade Sicily by July of that year in order to push further north. However, Sicily is considered an obvious target and may be defended by the Wehrmacht. Admiral Godfrey thinks that Britain must trick Nazi Germany into believing the Allies will invade Greece. Charles Cholmondeley proposes an operation from the Trout Memo, which would entail a corpse carrying false secrets washing ashore. Despite Godfrey's doubts, he gives Montagu and Cholmondeley permission to plan the operation with Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming.

Montagu and Cholmondeley obtain the body of a vagrant named Glyndwr Michael, who died by possible suicidal poisoning. He is given the false identity of Major William Martin, Royal Marines, with a detailed backstory and ID photos. A widowed secretary in the office, Jean Leslie, offers a photo of herself to serve as Martin's fake fiancée, "Pam", in exchange for a position on the team co-ordinating the operation. The team fabricate items for Martin to carry in his pockets, including theatre tickets, personal bills and a love letter from "Pam" written by Hester. Cholmondeley is attracted to Jean, but soon comes to believe that Montagu and Jean share romantic feelings. This causes Cholmondeley to grow jealous and occasionally lash out at Montagu. Complications ensue when Michael's sister arrives to claim his body, but she is turned away by Montagu and Cholmondeley.

Godfrey suspects Montagu's brother, Ivor, is a spy for the USSR. He bribes Cholmondeley to spy on Montagu and, in return, Godfrey will locate and return the remains of Cholmondeley's brother, who was killed in action in Chittagong, Bengal. Cholmondeley reluctantly agrees.

Specialist MI5 driver St John "Jock" Horsfall transports Montagu, Cholmondeley and the corpse to the submarine base at Holy Loch. The corpse is then loaded onto the submarine HMS Seraph. On 30 April, the Seraph arrives in the Gulf of Cádiz and drops the corpse into the ocean. It is found by fishermen in Huelva, Spain. Operation Mincemeat staff attempt to get the fake documents to Madrid. However, the mission is hampered by bad luck, as the Spanish have resisted Nazi influence more than expected. Captain David Ainsworth, the British naval attaché in Madrid, meets with Colonel Cerruti of the Spanish secret police in one last attempt to get the papers to the Germans. When Martin's personal items are returned to London, a specialist works out that the documents have been tampered with. This gives Operation Mincemeat staff hope that Germany retrieved the false information.

Jean is threatened by Teddy, a waiter at a club the team has frequented, claiming to be a spy for an anti-Hitler plot within Germany. She tells him that Major Martin was travelling under an alias but the classified information was genuine. After Teddy leaves, Jean informs Montagu and Cholmondeley. They come to believe that Colonel Alexis von Roenne, who controls intelligence in the German Army High Command, sent Teddy to verify information so von Roenne could undermine Hitler. However, they have no way of being sure. Montagu takes Jean to his home for protection, but she accepts a job in Special Operations and plans to leave London. Montagu convinces her to stay at least until the operation has been completed.

On 10 July, the Allied invasion of Sicily begins. News arrives that the Allies suffered limited casualties, the enemy is retreating, and the beaches have been held. Afterwards, Cholmondeley admits he received his brother's remains in return for spying on Montagu. Feeling sympathetic and relieved that Operation Mincemeat was a success, Montagu offers to buy Cholmondeley a drink even though it is eight in the morning.

The epilogue says that Montagu reunited with Iris after the war, Jean married a soldier, Hester continued as Director of the Admiralty Secretarial Unit, and Cholmondeley remained with MI5 until 1952, later married, and travelled widely. Major William Martin's identity was revealed to be Glyndwr Michael in 1997 when an epitaph, with his real name, was added to Martin's headstone in Spain.

Review:

This is a very different variety of war film to most, as it steps away from the front-line of battle and obvious action-packed warfare to focus on intelligence work conducted to ensure the success of combat operations. This makes Operation Mincemeat a breath of fresh air when you consider that most war films can be a long slog through action scene after action scene, focusing on little more than guns, tanks, planes and just general mindless violence. The film also tries as much as possible to be historically accurate, again a relief for those of us who may find that film and TV can at times push drama and action over true-to-life substance too far at times.

This being said, the film does apparently fall short in places by taking artistic license in places, most notably the apparent love triangle between Montagu, Jean and Cholmondeley. I say apparent love triangle because I’m not sure it quite qualifies. We certainly see that Cholmondeley is attracted to Jean, and at one point Montagu also advances some affection for her, but it’s not explicitly put across as being a romantic affection, nor is any clear and obvious romantic interest shown by Jean towards either man. Instead, we just get a bunch of ambiguous moments that are read, whether wrongly or not, as being romantic by others because they don’t know the real state of play and make assumptions. Given that everyone involved is an intelligence operative, the idea that they would be making assumptions about anything is very concerning indeed.

This aside, the film is well-acted, with the likes of Colin Firth, Jason Isaacs and others doing a great job of making this more sedate type of war story very entertaining. For James Bond fans, there’s also the occasional nod to that world via the presence of Ian Fleming, the intelligence agent who would go on to write Bond in the original novels. If I have any criticism of this film beyond the insertion and handling of the love triangle, which I feel wasn’t particularly necessary, it’s the lack of proper introduction to the various characters. I first watched this film on Blu-Ray, and I had to have the subtitles on to learn who everyone was.

Although the film does kind of make introductions as it goes along, many of these are too soft-spoken and, at times, they’re insufficiently explicit. If you’re a very linear thinker, as I am, then you’ll often want proper introductions to characters quite soon after each appearance. This is especially true if you’re not acquainted with the real-world events and characters that the film portrays. This is another case of a film not taking the proper time to work the correct level of information to engage an audience, making the film tricky to follow for anyone who hasn’t studied World War II intelligence history.

Given these flaws, set against an otherwise excellent film, I would balance out the final score at 7 out of 10.

#film review #operation mincemeat

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chanseainsworth · 4 months

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Hey, look! It’s [CHANSE AINSWORTH] at [HEYWOOD UNIVERSITY]. Did you know they [WORK] there as a [SOFTWARE ENGINEERING PROFESSOR]? I guess they’re from [LONDON] and have been in town for [1 WEEK], living in [MAPLE HILLS]. I also heard they’re a little [HOTHEADED], but also very [ADAPTABLE] which definitely makes sense.

BASICS

Name: Chaunsey Ainsworth Nicknames/Alias: Chanse Face Claim: Penn Badgley Age: 39 Gender: Cis Man Sexuality: Homosexual Date/Place of Birth: November 22/London, UK Currently: East Haven, VT Occupation: Software Engineering Professor at Heywood University

HISTORY

Chanse was the third child to Maggie and Edward Ainsworth, a prominent London couple. Maggie was a social butterfly, at every event and tea that happened in their neighborhood. Her husband a businessman, successful in his own right. Everyone knew them, knew their picturesque family, and everything was perfect.

Behind closed doors, it was another story. Maggie was never in her right mind, a timid drinker and self-medicator. Edward detested his wife's habits, but never took it out on her. Instead, he took it out on the children. They learned to hide their bruises, and to stay out of his way if they could. Chanse, being the third born, found it easiest to stay out of his home whenever possible. He was social, like his mother, and managed to befriend just about anyone. It was no wonder he was never home, he just had too many friends; it was normal, nobody asked questions, and nobody knew what went on in the Ainsworth home.

As he got older, Chanse knew he was different than his siblings. His sisters would dress him up sometimes, and he loved it. When they invited him to tea and talked about the boys they fancied, he giggled and chattered with them, happy to fit in with the girls. Which wasn't to say he didn't enjoy time with his brothers, as well, because he did. He liked to be rough with them, and he loved the sports they'd play at the park with the other boys. But he was always just a little bit more sensitive the rest, prone to getting upset and running back to his older sister, who always comforted him just how he needed.

He fell in love as a teenager. A close friend, maybe even his best friend, who became his first in a lot of things. And as they got older, they made plans to live together, and Chanse couldn't have been more excited. Finally, out of his family home, away from the danger that lurked in the shadows that nobody knew about, that the Ainsley's pretended didn't exist. Unfortunately, things didn't work out the way they were supposed to.

It was the last holiday he was going to take with his family. He promised himself that. They went somewhere warm, somewhere sunny, and he did try to have a good time. But at the same time, he was planning. Making a list, as he often did when he was stressed out about things. What was he going to pack, what was he going to leave behind, how would he make his grand exit, etc. It wouldn't have been a big deal to his mother when she found it, except that he'd written a few little notes to himself about his love for another. Maggie recognized the name, 'Owen', and brought it to her husband's attention that their son was not the son they'd thought he was.

Edward was angry. Extremely angry. And he let Chanse know it. The police might have been called, but Edward wouldn't know. After hitting some sense into his son, he dragged him downtown, past the exotic nightclubs and to someplace darker. Someplace dingier. Where women took money in return for certain favors. And with Edward sitting outside of the dilapidated building he'd shoved his son into, Chanse was given copious amounts of tequila until he was in a twilight state that allowed the woman paid to give Edward's son the good time Edward had paid her for.

Chanse barely remembers that night. He doesn't remember most of the holiday afterwards, either. He knows his father hit him several more times, he knows his mother cried at his bedside when it seemed like he wouldn't get out of bed again. And a few weeks later, just before they were going to head home, the woman from the dilapidated building showed up demanding more money. She was pregnant, he was the father, and she was going to have that baby so they were going to have to keep paying her. Mortified, Chanse stayed in the warm, sunny place with his new baby momma. His family returned to London without him, and he fell into a deep depression.

Once the baby was born, the woman took whatever money Chanse had left and abandoned the both of them. Lost, Chanse took his baby to the United States, figuring at the very least he could figure something out in a new place, with a fresh start. He might have given up entirely, if it weren't for the child who now relied on him.

He struggled to make ends meet for a long time. But he started working an IT job at a local college, and quickly picked up on the ins and outs of the computers he worked on. He'd always been clever with technology. Eventually he started creating his own software at home, and ended up inventing a malware protection software that the college he worked at began to use. Once it had been proven successful, other colleges bought his work.

At the time, he had finally come to terms with his own sexuality and was seeing an older man, Pietro. Pietro saw an opportunity, and utilizing Chanse's intelligence and lack of entrepreneurial know-how, he founded a company that based its work on Chanse's original software. Chanse continued to engineer, believing himself to be an equal partner in the company, not realizing he was actually the equivalent of a kept housewife who just happened to do all of the work. He was young, and stupid, and he came to regret everything.

For eighteen years he worked for this company he believed he'd helped found.

Things at home weren't great, but Chanse had a twisted idea of what love was, anyway. So for eighteen years he let himself be treated badly, mostly because it kept his child in a good home and in good private schools. He did his best to keep the toxic behavior of his boyfriend hidden from his child, though. Any bruises he hid, and any arguing he would back down from, letting Pietro always have the last word. Chanse believed it was what he deserved. He'd let his life get this way, after all.

When Pietro passed away, eyes were on Chanse. Who fell from a third-story balcony in the middle of the day, anyway? Autopsy said Pietro was quite drunk, however, and so Chanse was dropped as a suspect. Just a terrible, tragic, accident.

Pietro had a will, and nothing was left to Chanse. Suddenly he lost everything. The company he believed himself to be part owner of? Gone. They took his work and they abandoned him, just as he'd been abandoned so many times in the past. Once again, he was struggling, the difference being he was older now, and he no longer had a small child to support. Still, he looked for work that would pay what he felt he deserved after working so hard for nearly two decades. And eventually he received an offer from Heywood University. They were losing their software engineering professor, they needed a new one, and his name was still on so much of the work his old company produced.

So he moved to East Haven, bringing his son, the one person in the world who meant absolutely everything to him, with him. For the time being, they are renting a house in Maple Hills, but he is looking for something that will be more permanent for them eventually.

PERSONALITY

Chanse is smart, but definitely foolish. He can memorize numbers, build a computer out of spare parts, and solve intricate math problems in his head, but he'll also hand all of that work over to the nearest person, believing them to have good intentions, and be baffled when they take his work and put their name on it instead.

He's a lover, not a fighter. All his life, he just wanted to be loved. And when he had love, he did everything he could to keep it. When it seemed like he'd lost it, he gave up immediately. Such as with Owen; knowing he'd slept with someone else, even if he didn't remember it and even if it was basically forced on him by his homophobic father, he felt immense guilt and knew he would just hurt Owen when he told him. And so he never did, he just stayed gone, terrified that Owen would hate him. And thus, he likely made Owen hate him just based on his own disappearance.

In addition to looking desperately for love wherever he could find it, he accepted a lot of things as love, even when he knew they weren't. He believed his parents loved him, even though they ignored or hurt him. And he believed Pietro loved him, though their relationship was bizarre to say the very least. He could write books on the things Pietro did to him, especially when he was a young man with a small child, but chances are he won't open up to anyone about all of that. Now that Pietro is gone, Chanse is realizing exactly how fucked up he is after twenty years of that relationship.

He's a good person, believe it or not. He wants what is best for others, though he seems snarky and sarcastic most of the time. His social skills are lacking, but if you can get through to him you'll have a loyal friend for a long time.

Were he to ever seek professional help, he would be diagnosed as bipolar and autistic. He'd probably be given ways to cope a little better than he has in his lifetime, and it could probably be very good for him. Unfortunately, he's never had anyone around to tell him to seek that sort of help, so he's never known how it might actually benefit him. All of the problems he faces he believes are his own fault, and thus his own burden to carry.

#easthavenintro #death tw #abuse tw #mental illness tw

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