What does loyalty mean when someone must choose between their job, their country, and their marriage? Gavin Hood’s film Official Secrets, explores this treacherous question in nerve-wracking depth.
The film tells the true story of Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley), a British government employee that gave information to the media about a secret NSA plot in 2003 to blackmail members of the UN Security Council, in the hopes that it would prevent the Iraq War. Hood’s narrative follows Gun’s discovery of the memo through her agonizing decision to disclose it to the media. It then traces the journey of journalist Martin Bright (Matt Smith) after he receives the memo and attempts to verify its authenticity, before deciding with his colleagues at The Observer whether the information’s public good outweighs violating Britain’s Official Secrets Act by publishing it. Once the memo is published, Katharine remorsefully confesses to her crime, triggering the intense legal consequences that come from exposing government secrets.
I sat down with writer/director Gavin Hood and the journalist Martin Bright for an engaging conversation about the rich themes of loyalty, law, and journalism, and how they’re reflected in the picture, which opens on September 6 in Boston, MA.
Read the full piece here.