Operation Mincemeat (dir. John Madden, 2022)- Review

One feted tweet about the contemporary Anglosphere runs thus: ‘why’, it wonders, with a picture of a soggy dish of gravy and peas, ‘does the UK still eat like the Germans are still flying overhead?’ On this Jubilee weekend, it seems apt to turn to Operation Mincemeat, the latest, feeblest flair of British patriotic gumption; rather like Tom Cruise’s Top Gun, this supposed hurrah of imperial period power lands as a sad, Pythonesque parody.

World War II offers the last shreds of British dignity: buffeting the European war machine, one-upping the French, and most importantly, retaining the moral high ground. Politicians in the country have appealed to this spirit since the middle of the decade, calling on an aura of shrugging, well-intentioned individualism; indeed, British Pathe cinema reels imbued the nation with the received pronunciation and snide cosmopolitan sensibilities that would shape it after the war. Alas, the Blitz spirit synonymous with Queen Elizabeth, and the media machine of her midcentury era, appears to have broken down.

Operation Mincemeat should have been a proper, steak and ale period drama: with all the essential components of a real life wartime yarn, a thoroughly Kiplingesque cast, and a slew of sad, grey government buildings, it could have warmed the cockles of Anglophiles the world over. Starring three pillars of globalised British swagger- Colin Firth and Matthew Macfayden, of Pride and Prejudice fame, alongside Kelly Macdonald from Trainspotting- the film attempts to bring an outrageous episode from WWII to life. And yet, with all these resources at its disposal, it fails.

In real, incredible life, during the spring of 1943 the British launched an elaborately accessorized body into the sea towards Spain. The corpse- an unidentified navvy- would be laden with documents that painted him as a high-ranking intelligence officer, and vitally, suggested that the Allies would invade Greece and Sicily rather Sardinia. And in true British fashion- a spirit maintained by the Queen, in the eyes of her enthusiastic subjects- the officers responsible maintained a stiff upper lip. At least until a Netlix dramatisation hoved onto the horizon.