Page Eight, the new selection on PBS\' “Masterpiece Contemporary,” is more beautifully filmed than most movies on the big screen, and the gorgeous cinematography, especially of London draped with electric light at night, cinched it as a closing night selection at this year\'s Toronto Film Festival. Page Eight arrives with more prestige than usual for the “Masterpiece” series. Not many programs emerge from prestigious film festivals or include actors with Hollywood resumes such as Bill Nighy, Rachel Weisz, Ralph Fiennes and Michael Gambon.
Written and directed by Sir David Hare (the screenwriter for The Reader and The Hours), Page Eight offers an unlikely protagonist in the form as the dry-as-Scotch Mi5 agent Johnny Worricker (Nighy). Recruited out of Cambridge in the \'60s, Johnny is a holdover from the Cold War era of espionage against the backdrop of cool jazz. Poker-faced and with a deep streak of cynicism, Johnny clings nevertheless to scraps of an old-fashioned principle called honor. Everyone, from his estranged daughter to irksome political flaks, reminds Johnny that it\'s now the 21st century, which for him has become a tiresome excuse for every idiocy. Idiotic or not, the world is leaving him behind; he\'s tired but takes up a final challenge—a sensitive report linking the mendacious, Tony Blair-like Prime Minister (Fiennes) to CIA black prisons, where suspects are tortured for answers that seldom ring true.
Johnny lives across the landing from Nancy (Weisz), an activist who believes her brother was deliberately killed by Israeli forces during a West Bank protest. They are intrigued with one another, and perhaps the cautious stirring of love energizes Johnny for one last fight. Speaking in a strangled patrician murmur, Johnny is implacable under stress. He never breaks a sweat, even when staring down the Prime Minister.
As with many classic mysteries and thrillers, the plot is a bit convoluted and unreasonable, yet Page Eight\'s dialogue is written with great sophistication and the production is steeped in mood and character. Especially fascinating is Johnny, the spy who loves old jazz and modern art, disapproves of the morbidity of his artist daughter\'s postmodernism and cuts through any argument with razor sharp analysis. He\'s not the nicest man in the world, but even after a lifetime of duplicity, he has a heart.
Page Eight debuts at 8 p.m., Nov. 6, on Milwaukee Public Television Channels 10.1 and 36.2.
