The story, one of the most important and delicate in the history of the Observer, ran even though the paper had controversially taken a pro-war stance weeks earlier. The belief was that doing so would help the US and UK governments to swing wavering countries in favour of a planned invasion of Iraq. The memo, a single sheet of paper, asked her and her colleagues to help the US government spy on UN security council delegations in New York. Gun, 28 at the time, was working as a Mandarin translator at GCHQ, the British government’s communications HQ in Cheltenham, when she leaked a confidential US National Security Agency email to the Observer. Katharine’s story is a very important piece of the Iraq war puzzle and one which has been missing for too long.” Even in the recent Iraq inquiry, which was otherwise very thorough, she was not called to testify. Not only for the fact that it’s a great film in its own right-but also for the fact that it may make you think about what you consume, and how real it actually is.“It’s a story that has largely been overlooked. We have a responsibility to question this information if we think there’s something wrong. Not every source is credible, not everything we read is true. Official Secrets stands as a reminder that we need to challenge what we’re being told if we don’t think it’s right. We get bombarded with information from all angles, and most of the time we don’t question what we hear. I don’t think there’s a better time for this story to be told. So to come full circle, does this story need to be told? Yes, absolutely. It felt like she raised the bar high, and the others all met her up there-truly not a weak link among them. I was expecting Knightley to be the standout performance, but in fact everyone else performed at her level as well. The rest of the cast deserve a mention as their performances were also excellent. ![]() You start to see her struggle with the fact that her personal morals have severe legal consequences on the people around her. As the plot unravels, the implications of Katharine’s actions starts to seep into her family life. I think what makes this film so gripping is that it gets you to care a lot about its protagonist. ![]() Keira Knightley is unsurprisingly excellent as Katharine Gun. And while there is some of that certainly, the film explains it all very succinctly. Going in, I was initially worried that I may have gotten lost in the jargon of the script. Despite this, the film does do a great job of explaining everything. That’s the broad strokes, but there are many more complexities to the story. Katharine then starts to experience the ramifications of what she’s done in her personal life as well. She watches as the country’s leaders try to cover up the truth, and spread misinformation to the masses. Appalled by this, Katharine leaks this memo to The Observer newspaper. She receives an email stating that the US government want to spy on some United Nation diplomats who are about to vote on whether they should go to war on Iraq, with the hopes of potentially swinging their votes so that they approve of the war. Official Secrets is the story of Katharine Gun, who works at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). ![]() But to reiterate my previous question, does this story need to be told? So watching Official Secrets was a learned experience for me. I know very little about world events or modern history-for I live in my millennial vacuum where I have replaced the need for social interaction with Nintendo Switch games. I also enjoyed the fact that I had absolutely no idea what it was about initially. ![]() Official Secrets caught my attention initially because of its cast and its mood. Official Secrets Directed by: Gavin Hood Runtime: 112 minutesĪ question I usually find myself asking when watching a film based on a true story is: “Does this story need to be told?” I mostly do this because, these days, we’re a bit over-saturated with true story dramas, especially around awards season.
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