Reviewed by: Avril Carruthers

Matching the taut suspense, gradually unfolding mystery and deft characterisation of his 1975 political thriller Three Days of the Condor, accomplished director Sydney Pollack brings The Interpreter, a story superbly crafted in a classic mould. A potentially explosive political situation, a global peace-keeping body, and individuals all with different backgrounds and conflicting secret agendas make up this potent and edgy drama.

In a mesmerising opening scene in a wind-scoured African dust bowl, a white journalist and photographer are being driven to a secret location by a black man. As they pass a tribal man with bandaged eyes being led by a younger person down the road, the journalist comments that President Zuwanie has murdered half his people. Passing under a dilapidated concrete archway, inscribed with the name Edward Zuwanie, outside a deserted soccer stadium, only the journalist and driver are allowed to go in. The danger is palpable, despite the three innocent-seeming boys who ask if they “want to see the bodies”.  Hiding in the long grass outside the stadium, the photographer snaps the appalling events that ensue.

A world away in the United Nations Building in Manhattan, UN interpreter Silvia Broome (Nicole Kidman) is at work in her booth above a General Assembly meeting. The Interpreter is the first film ever to be allowed to be shot inside the actual United Nations and it took a director of the calibre of Sydney Pollack for an exception to decades-old policy to be made. The result is that the UN itself features as an extraordinary presence in this film, the high-ceilinged meeting hall with its rows of seats and the many different languages being spoken at once somehow representing a powerful and serious force against national divisiveness and power mongering.

Silvia accidentally overhears a deadly, whispered conversation about a plot to assassinate a visiting head of state. It's in Ku, a tribal language known by only a handful at the UN, of the southern African country of Matobo, but coincidentally where Silvia grew up. She deduces that the intended victim is Zuwanie, visiting the UN with a new plan for that country.  Despite the probability that her life may be in danger, federal agent Tobin Keller (Sean Penn), assigned to protect the endangered dignitary, blandly informs her he is not there to protect her and turns a cynical eye on her witness statement.

Silvia has been trained to contain her reactions and to choose her words with care in her work as an interpreter at the UN. It's an occupation where a carelessly chosen translation might misinterpret, or cause to be misinterpreted, the meaning, with potentially devastating consequences. She studies voices for nuances of meaning as Tobin studies faces, and he immediately judges her a liar. Misunderstandings and ill-found conclusions are rife. He suspects her background, and that of her journalist brother, confronting her with photographs which radically contradict the way she presents herself. Knowing he also is keeping something private, at one point she says, “We're on opposite sides of the river, you and me.”

Kidman is textured as a woman who grew up in a post-colonial African country, who trained in music and studied philosophy and languages at the Sorbonne. Her accent appropriately similar to a white Zimbabwean's, she conveys well a complex and intensely private woman with tragic secrets and a violent past she has chosen to leave behind in favour of diplomacy. Among other things, this film shows that given a good script, a great director and a talented leading man, Kidman's gifts can be ably displayed.

Penn gives a convincing rendition of a man emptied by personal grief and needing his work as a distraction. Coming to the point of sharing his recent tragedy with Silvia marks a development in their relationship where he begins finally to trust her. As agent Dot Woods, Catherine Keener is not given a great deal of range but plays Tobin's sidekick with wry humour. As Edward Zuwanie, Earl Cameron convincingly shows a man caught in the supreme arrogance of his own propaganda.

There is compelling relevance in the background of escalating political corruption and human rights abuses in the fictional southern African country of Matobo, so similar to Zimbabwe (even the bi- and trisyllabic name Edward Zuwanie calls to mind the name Robert Mugabe, while Matobo is another name for Matopos, a Zimbabwe National Park) or to Kenya or Mozambique. The story achingly mirrors that of so many post-colonial, sub-Saharan countries where erstwhile strong-man liberators of African nations fall prey to the corruption of centralising power, lack of accountability and genocidal tribalism.  When Tobin asks Silvia how she feels about Zuwanie, her reply is “Disappointed”. It echoes the feeling of Africans, black or white, hopeful of fair and harmonious independent rule in beloved countries long depredated by the evils of colonialism.

Themes of violent political struggle, terrorism, personal vengeance, truth vs apparency, and justice are interwoven with an intricate plot, crackling pace, characterisation with depth and good acting. Some scenes are chilling – one a doomed bus ride which is the convergent point of terrorist(s) and victims, intended or otherwise; another a park bench meeting between Silvia and the photographer present at the shooting death of her brother; still another the final confrontation between Silvia and Zuwanie – and though I would have preferred this last to include an answer from the dictator to her question, perhaps there is no adequate answer without the kind of honesty such a man lost long ago.

Special Thanks: Movie-Vault