Scoop, the review of the Netflix film with Gillian Anderson

“Those who suffer from fixations never recognize them as such” Freud stated, and in the society of the image the obsession that haunts us is to scrutinize the lives of others, to let ourselves be overwhelmed by the rises, but above all by the falls of idols, stars, and even rulers. After all, it is the hero’s fall, not his success that conquers us. The Jeffrey Epsetin case was a shock wave that still hasn’t receded today: the tide hit the screens, the pages of newspapers, dragging down even those who found themselves complicit in that scandal, like Prince Andrew of ‘England.

As we will point out in this review Of Scoopthere is something magnetic, engaging, in the film directed by Philip Martin and available on Netflix. A film that attracts, like the flow of words in a piece of news launched at the last minute. The apparent canonicity of the shots, the linear editing, without idiosyncrasies or virtuosic impulses, makes for a simple reading, accessible to all, like a page from a newspaper, or one last hour on the news. A story that lives on glimmers of news and illuminated by something already seen, because it has already been experienced, but capable of dressing up in an original, new outfit, with which to shock its audience again, as if it were the first time.

Scoop: the plot

Based on the book Scoops: Behind the Scenes of the BBC’s Most Shocking Interviewswritten by Sam McAlister, Scoop follows the phases that led to the drafting of the program Newsnight of the BBC to interview Prince Andrew following the Epstein scandal in which he was involved. From the tension of producer Sam McAlister’s complex negotiations (Billie Piper) with Buckingham Palace, up to the shocking forensic evidence with which Emily Maitlis (Gillian Anderson) challenges Prince Andrew (Rufus Sewell), Scoop takes us to the heart of history, following the courage and audacity of women ready to do anything, even to distance the prince from his public roles, just to bring the truth to the surface.

The minds behind the news

No piece of news would have the same value if there wasn’t someone at the center of it, and above all someone hidden behind its construction; someone who writes it, manipulates it, returns it knowing which accents to focus on and which factors to press. It is the ability to capture media interest and manipulate it, anticipating the voyeuristic impulse of current society, and satisfying it with new scandals. And that’s right anchoring himself to the faces of his actors that Philip Martin’s shot drags the flow of his work, without forcing, but immersing the viewer in a magnetic dialectic, made up of blows and responses rooted in everyday life, and therefore credible.

Assault shots, imperturbable looks

Martin’s camera skilfully passes from medium shots to close-ups full of pathos he investigates the nature of his characters’ emotions like an assault reporter; it lets them make mistakes, think, act, with apparent independence, on the basis of a free will that we forget is imposed by the hands of a screenwriter. The distances between actor and spectator are therefore reduced to zero, thanks to a parade of performers where, rather than make-up, colored lenses, facial and body prostheses, they prefer to restore a deeper, more intimate closeness with their reference characters, in a direct dialogue with a stolen, internalized and now returned soul under new (false) guise. The clothes, the same for Sam in every phase of preparation for the television interview, are symbolic elements of a time that seems to have stopped, repeating itself the same, day after day, meeting after meeting.

But it is the bodies that fill those clothes, and the inflexible, yet mimetic looks, capable of returning with a single raise of eyebrows, an entire inner tsunami, that make Scoop an unmissable work because it is tangible, human. A work that lives on personal ambition, in search of truth, justice, but without chases, interrogations, witnesses listened to and others ignored: Scoop It’s not The Boston Strangler or even She Said. Scoop it is a work that lives on the artistic essence inherited from the English heritage, of that theatrical scenic construction where every existence becomes a stage. A space where everyone is an actor ready to enter the scene never unprepared, with the script learned by heart, and lines rehearsed by heart, so as to leave no room for improvisation, for unexpected questions and answers left blank.

My kingdom for an interview

“Forensic, tough, but never sensationalistic“: this is how the _Newsnight program is described to Prince Andrew, but using the same adjectives it is also possible to present a work as Scoop: the union of female figures ready to reveal the truth, to take a reality and undress it down to its human and weak, fallacious and fragile nature, never in a forced manner, but following a path free of obstacles and apparently simple to follow. Every joke lives on a almost documentary sense of objective narration, without frills or rhetorical embellishments, supported by that typically English humor that has so marked works such as The Queen, or The Crown series. Persists in Scoop a respectful loyalty both to the importance of journalism and to the search for truthwithout excessively denigrating the villain of the story, namely Prince Andrew.

What follows is a strong arm between the human being – and therefore exposed to personal falls – and that insistent declaration of innocence played in front of the camera. Why “an hour of television is magical, it can change everything”, Sam herself says, you just need to play your cards, make your spectators accomplices, focus on sympathy. He lives in Scoop the ghostly remnant of a Frost/Nixon – The duel updated and conducted by a female force equally capable, like its predecessor, of taking charge of the spectator’s interest, exploiting the fall of an untouchable personality, to strip him of his divinity. A tennis match where the cold, icy, apathetic tones of a television studio clash with the warm ones of a household ready to betray, become the scene of a revealing interview.

The thousand levels of meaning of an apparently simple work

Scoop it’s not just an hour and forty minutes of cinema in television format, as well as Scoop it is not just a biographical work of a contemporary nature. Scoop it is a multi-layered construct where, hidden beneath the cinematic surface, there are different levels of reading that dialogue with our actuality and the ethical-moral senses that make us good citizens of the world. Last but not least, the power of the word beats at the heart of the film, written or modeled by a screen that is always on, capable of controlling our thoughts. But Scoop it is also a psychological essay never shouted, but sighed, whispered to its spectator through details inserted in the space of an American plan, such as soft toys, puppets, and objective correlatives of a childhood lived in a symbiotic manner with the figure of a mother subjugated by the role of queen. An almost Oedipal relationship, of a favorite son, who searches in his obsessions for traits of a mother-son relationship that has now been lost.

Trading yourself for your character

And Rufus Sewell goes beyond the physical resemblance to his Andrea: the actor takes a step back, trading his own personality, his own charm, and charisma, with that of his character, in a perfect identity exchange, supported by a chameleonic and convincing performance; just as convincing are Billie Piper and Gillian Anderson in the role of journalists who, for an audience foreign to the English one, will not boast the same media resonance as Prince Andrew, but who, once filtered by Martin’s camera, reveal themselves to be equally capable of piercing the screen, taking the spectator by the hand and inserting him into the inside a lady where instead of pawns we find questions, insinuations, hidden and now revealed truths. For a sudden, crucial, irresistibly attractive “game”.