The Russians, those staples of Cold War film, TV and literature, are back!
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the declared end of the Cold War, other international villains — narcos, terrorists and arms dealers — began occupying, in the public imagination, the sinister real estate that the Soviets had owned for decades.
But did the Russians ever really leave?
Consider the latest wrinkle in the zeitgeist. The superb, nail-biting, twisting and turning FX drama The Americans, which follows two KGB spies as they navigate suburban American life in the early 1980s, begins its fifth season Tuesday night at 10.
From its first season I’ve admired the way in which The Americans’ talented producers, writers and cast have teased out the contradictions and nuances of Cold War politics in the Reagan era.
As with any first-rate period drama, The Americans reflects not only the particularities of the era in which it is set, but also the era in which it is made. It demonstrates, as superior entertainment does, an uncanny ability to seemingly anticipate and mirror real-life events.
The KGB spies, Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, played with terrific intensity by Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell, live in the Washington D.C. Beltway, where they run a travel agency.
The Jenningses, who are Russian transplants, appear as wholly and wholesomely American as any other suburban family — that is, if you’re a family that happens to keep on hand a seemingly bottomless supply of disguises, eavesdropping devices, poisons and weaponry, all part of their tradecraft.
When the couple tell their two children, who initially know nothing of their parents’ real jobs, that they’re just stepping out for an hour because of an unexpected situation at work, you know that all hell is about to break loose.
Elizabeth is a hardline believer in the Soviet cause while Philip has his doubts, although, as a good soldier, he does what he’s told.
When the show concluded its fourth season last spring, with the Jenningses ever closer to having their cover blown by the FBI agents who have been on their trail since the first season, the following real-life events had not yet happened:
The rise of Donald Trump and his election to the presidency. The hacking of Democratic National Committee emails by the Russians. The question of how close the ties were and are between the Russian government and some of Trump’s campaign functionaries. The resignation of former Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn from the president’s National Security Council because of concerns about what he said in conversations with Russian officials before the inauguration.
In view of these revelations, the 1980s world in which The Americans moves doesn’t seem so distant, in the vein of William Faulkner’s oft-quoted observation about the past being neither past nor dead.
Politicians, spies and diplomats still make uneasy alliances, court their enemies, get their hands dirty and wonder, occasionally, whether the business in which they’re engaged is really for the good of their country. Ideology has its reasons, and limits. We say we prize change, but we also fear uncertainty and disruption.
The work takes a psychological toll and in the worst cases, takes lives as well. That the Cold War, and its hot skirmishes, also serves as a metaphor for the Jenningses’ marriage and family life, only magnifies the tension.
But the compromises the Jenningses are forced to make, the lies they tell, and the violence they directly or indirectly unleash, wear them down.
You see the same effect on their American counterparts, in particular FBI agent Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich) who, as luck would have it, is the Jenningses’ next-door neighbor but hasn’t yet put together the pieces of what they do for a living.
The Americans — and you can interpret that as you choose — are in a high-stakes, high-octane but ultimately exhausting business, where triumphs are rarely made known publicly but disasters are splashed all over the evening news.
The show stands for something larger than itself, and the line between fictional and real-life drama is increasingly blurred.
The Americans asks, what kind of country are we? Can we look at ourselves from another point of view, even one as diametrically opposed as that of the former Soviet Union? And, not least, who do you trust?
One of the things the series does best is show how the propaganda struggle is a long, long game.
To use the obvious chess analogy, big moves are thought out well in advance, and the ramifications of moving this pawn here and that pawn there carefully considered. To play expertly takes cunning, patience and audacity.
But when the unexpected happens in the series, just as it did in the months leading up to and after the election of President Trump, a world that seemed relatively predictable is shown to be anything but.
And then where do you, or Elizabeth and Philip and their kids, go from there?
One disturbing, conceivable scenario is suggested in another fine series now available on Netflix, the 10-part Norwegian drama Occupied, which was televised in Norway in 2015 and became available on Netflix last spring.
Based on an idea by the best-selling Norwegian crime novelist Jo Nesbo, Occupied takes an unlikely premise and makes it seem possible.
Again, events in the real world overtook what appeared to be solely a fictional thriller and made Occupied resonate in eerie ways.
In a near future where climate change is of urgent concern, a naive Norwegian prime minister has to navigate between a proverbial Scylla and Charybdis. The PM declares he is going to move the country to non-greenhouse gases sources of energy, shutting down the country’s extensive oil and gas production.
This doesn’t sit well with the European Union, of which Norway is not a member, and the EU threatens the PM with a full scale Russian invasion if he doesn’t cooperate with the Russians to restart oil and gas production. In the background, the Americans, who have withdrawn from NATO, wait to see which way the wind blows.
Given Russia’s superior military strength, the Norwegian government dares not take it on in a war, and sets up a kind of collaborationist Vichy zone.
The Russians physically control the areas where oil and gas are extracted and produced, but they also flood into Oslo, the capital, working as business people, journalists and diplomats. At the same time, a Norwegian armed resistance to the Russians takes shape, both battling with Russian forces and planning guerilla attacks.
Occupied was filmed at around the same time as the Russian incursion into, and annexation of, Crimea in 2014, and the show drew furious condemnation from the Russian government when it aired in 2015.
The series also evokes Norway’s World War II history, when Vidkun Quisling served as minister-president under German occupation, cooperating with the Nazis. After the war his name became synonymous with shameful betrayal and collaboration.
Similar to The Americans, Occupied considers the toll of collaboration and resistance, and where loyalty lies.
What is more important: your own personal code or your allegiance to state, party and country? Two of the key characters in Occupied, the Russian ambassador to Norway and a Norwegian police officer charged with her protection, dance around these questions.
As for the Norwegian prime minister, is it preferable to exercise the kind of judicious restraint that will save lives, or is outright armed resistance the better path? Do you try to see the enemy as human, thereby introducing compassion and empathy? Or is the enemy just that?
And if your own self-interest happens to coincide with the objectives of an occupying or foreign power, is it treason to seize that opportunity? Moral compromises creep in little by little, and whether you intended it, you, too, become sullied.
The 10 episodes of Occupied end on an ambiguous, unfinished note, suggesting that a second series might be in the works. (I hope so.) The Americans is slated to end in the spring of 2018.
Both series show that, in a sense, the old world order is the new world order is the old world order.
As the song goes, I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution. Take a bow for the new revolution.
Nicola Smith can be reached at nsmith@vnews.com.