Never satisfied with convention, director Steven Soderbergh saw his latest feature “Black Bag” as an opportunity to not only deconstruct the spy genre, but also challenge preconceived notions around marriage. The film stars Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett as married intelligence agents forced to reassess their loyalties to one another. A noted cinephile, Soderbergh recently shared during a recent interview with Variety that he and screenwriter David Koepp took inspiration from a classic source.
“David and I talked about what it would be like if George and Martha were spies,” he said. “We wanted to make an espionage version of ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’”
The Edward Albee play was famously adapted in 1966 for a film by Mike Nichols starring real-life husband and wife Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Soderbergh is a huge fan of the film and was a close associate of Nichols before he died in 2014. They even did a commentary track together for the DVD release of “Virginia Woolf.” Though the material he chose to reference for the film is rather dour and dark, Soderbergh nonetheless wanted “Black Bag” to be more of a blockbuster than a serious affair.
“There’s a version of this movie where you go a very different way. Where you don’t glam it up and you make it grittier and harder and kind of less fun. And that just wasn’t what I had in mind,” said Soderbergh. “We felt this was a real Hollywood movie and you should get movie stars, and you should make them look great. That was the movie I wanted to make.”
While “Virginia Woolf” may have been a strong reference, the film also owes a lot to the spy genre, with Fassbender even resembling John le Carré’s beloved George Smiley to a certain degree. At the same time, Soderbergh and Koepp didn’t want this to be just another “Bourne” movie or variation of the like.
“David found a way to keep it fresh,” Soderbergh told Variety. “He found a way to differentiate it by going kind of narrow and deep on the character work, as opposed to let’s turn it into an action spectacle. It’s an emotional, psychological spectacle.”
Another subversion Soderbergh and Koepp slipped into “Black Bag” is how the relationship between Fassbender and Blanchett’s character isn’t as toxic as one may assume. Though their jobs are to keep and collect secrets, there’s a refreshing affection between the two that feels unexpected and will keep audiences on their toes.
“It’s also unusual to see a movie about a marriage in which an affair is not the point,” said Soderbergh. “And I like this idea that the other people they work with are kind of annoyed at how well their marriage works.”
“Black Bag” is currently in theaters from Focus Features.
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