One of the central questions in The Catcher Was a Spy (2018) is what do we know?  It is something intrinsic to our existence and Faith.  Every Christian asks her or himself this about God at some point in their journey.  It can come up even after witnessing some of the most incredible miracles this side of Heaven.  Those who Moses led out of Egypt to the Promised Land in the Old Testament saw God divide bodies of water and give them literal food from Heaven, and yet they would doubt.  These are bigger ideas.  They can also apply to our interpersonal relationships, though those also work as a metaphor for our relationship with God.  You can trust someone implicitly, and yet be let down by that same person. Luckily, this is behavior of which God is incapable.  Yet, with those in our lives, you can wonder about anyone how well we know one another.  I bring this up because it is a conundrum about the protagonist, Morris “Moe” Berg (Paul Rudd), in today’s film, and the person he is tasked to pursue.

It is December, 1944, in Zurich, Switzerland, and we find out that The Catcher Was a Spy through Moe’s conversation with Martinuzzi (Pierfrancesco Favino).  The latter of these is Moe’s contact in the neutral country, the city in which Moe is supposed to track down Werner Heisenberg (Mark Strong).  Werner is a German physicist suspected of being in the process of building an atomic bomb for the Nazis.  If you know your history, you will understand how that is a problem for the United States and its allies.  Thus, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) sends Moe to potentially assassinate the Nazi scientist.  How Moe gets into this situation is the subject of most of the film.  Its title is also quite literal.  Before the war, Moe is a catcher for the Boston Red Sox.  We see him at the tail end of his career, and a middling one at that, but still good enough to be picked to go with other professional players for a tour of Japan after the season.  One of his teammates, though, thinks there is something off about Moe.  It is not simply the fact that he holds advanced degrees from Princeton University and can speak multiple languages.  His education makes some suspect that he is homosexual, and he is followed to a clandestine hangout for others like him.  After having a brush with the nosy teammate, he goes home to Estella Huni (Sienna Miller).  Though they are not married, we see them make love.  So, yeah, kind of complicated.  Still, God’s creations are rarely so simple.  He evidently loves her, but she is disappointed when he tells her that he would like to go to Japan on his own.  While there, he meets and befriends Kawabata (Hiroyuki Sanada).  They discuss the potential of armed conflicted between their nations, and it is suggested that they sleep with one another.  This is all a bit fuzzy, but it seems to be shown in order to set up Moe venturing to the top of a Japanese hospital and taking a film reel of the nearby naval yards.  Thus, when he is back home a few years later and the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, he has the film ready to turn into the OSS.  It is reviewed by its director, Bill Donovan (Jeff Daniels), who is impressed.  This leads to an interview between the two men.  During it, Bill directly asks about Moe’s sexual preferences.  Moe remains cagey, while professing his patriotism, and it is enough for him to earn a position with the forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).  For a while during the beginning of his tenure with the OSS, Moe is at a desk analyzing information they collect.  He grows bored with the work and soon demands a transfer to the field.  Given his knowledge of several languages, that mission comes soon enough.  The United States government is seeking to assess how far along are the Germans in building a fission explosive.  It is thanks to fellow scientist Samuel Goudsmit (Paul Giamatti) that they have any sense at all of the Nazi progress.  Moe and Samuel are thus sent to Italy, along with Colonel Robert Furman (Guy Pearce), to make contact with Professor Edoardo Amaldi (Giancarlo Giannini).  As Germany and Italy had been working together to this point in the war, the Italian physicist provides insight into Werner’s relative success in constructing the weapon.  What Moe is more interested in doing is studying Werner.  There is some suggestion, particularly from Samuel, that Werner might not be fully cooperating with the Nazis.  This idea is furthered by Paul Scherrer (Tom Wilkinson), a Swiss scientist, Werner’s friend, and the OSS liaison in the country.  It is Paul who, at the behest of the OSS, invites Werner to Zurich to give a lecture.  Moe attends the talk in order to gauge what gains the Germans have made with the bomb.  He is warned by Paul, though, not to expect much from what Werner publicly reveals.  Instead, Moe attends the dinner that Paul gives for Werner at the end.  Moe and Werner end up speaking over a chess board, used as a metaphor for them to develop an understanding of one another.  Yet, when the insults of other guests at the perceived Nazi get to be too much for Werner, he decides to leave early.  Moe follows him out and has a gun on Werner when a shot is fired.  Martinuzzi has killed a Gestapo officer who is about to murder them.  In the course of the rest of Moe and Werner’s discussion, the OSS officer decides the Germans are not close and walks away.

Before the end credits of The Catcher Was a Spy roll, there are some historical notes.  For example, Moe is given the Medal of Freedom, the highest award a civilian can earn, but refuses it.  Why he would do so is not explained, and it seems to be in keeping with the notion that no one ever knew the true Morris Berg.  Speaking of history, though, I cannot find any solid evidence that Moe had any homosexual tendencies, so this appears to be an invention of the movie.  I will confess that I went looking for this fact specifically, not because I am Catholic and thus anti-gay, but out of simple curiosity.  As such, I am not sure why this aspect was added to Moe’s character.  In a general sense, though, to continue the theme in the introduction, it is interesting to see how this is used as a way of making him complex and hard to pin down.  Put differently, no one knows us as well as God.  No one can.  This includes everything we do in secret, including being a closeted homosexual or even the abuse scandals that rocked the Church.  God sees.  One thing that Moe tells Kawabata as an indirect way of admitting his sexual preferences is that he “likes to hide.”  There is no hiding from God.  That might sound vaguely threatening, and to be sure, there will one day be an accounting of our sins.  Those of us who have a contrite heart (and are Catholic) can go to Confession and receive absolution.  In a sense, this all fits with some of what you see in the movie.  We do not know the full extent of what goes on in someone’s heart and mind, but hopefully they are bringing those things to the Confessional and thus to God.  The process, though, does not stop when you walk out to do your penance.  Faith is a continual road (some might call it a struggle, liking trying to hide being homosexual) of conversion that demands that we have a relationship with God.  That is the only way we can not only be healed, but fully be known as the people God wants us to be.

Because of The Catcher Was a Spy’s ambiguity, it is a difficult film to recommend.  The scene where Estella and Moe make love is also a tad awkward and violent.  Perhaps this is owed to the slightly discordant music that plays in the background, a stark contrast to the Claude Debussy piece Estella had been playing.  I also think Moe is meant to be a hero, but again, the matter is left in the air.  And that is where I will leave this review.