The story of a brilliant young man called to be part of the Manhattan Project. He was so bright that he understood that so much power could not remain in the hands of one party. This is the story A Compassionate Spy tells, a documentary presented out of competition at Venice 79.
Ted Hall is the name of the man who may have saved the world from a nuclear apocalypse. Soon after realizing the magnitude of what they were creating, and even more so following the devastation caused by the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed hundreds of thousands of people, Hall made a decision. A very rational one. Provide the Soviet Union with documents that would help the opposing power to the United States accelerate the development of their nuclear device. In this way, the political and military balance would be balanced again. Hall believed that knowing the destructive force of these devices, both governments would use them as a deterrent rather than a threat. And he was probably right.
But the most incredible part of this tale is another, but to not spoil anyone’s surprise, it will not be revealed here. What does matter is that A Compassionate Spy is a documentary of a very high standard, supported by archival material, interviews with Hall’s wife and children, and the children of his best friend, who helped him in the enterprise that would have landed him in the electric chair if he had been discovered. If. Beyond that, where archives could not be found, director Steve James opted for a fictionalized reconstruction of the protagonists’ words. A way to never let the viewer out of the story, which is moreover also a beautiful love story and a very classically structured noir.
James is, furthermore, an expert with a long career behind him, first as a documentary film editor, nominated for an Oscar for that for Hoop Dreams, a masterpiece of the sports doc that won an Oscar in 1995. As a director, he ran for the statuette in 2018 for Abacus, and A Compassionate Spy will undoubtedly be one of the short-listed films.