VENICE, Italy — “This is kind of like: whoa.”
And that’s Chicago documentary filmmaker Steve James’ deadpan monosyllable response when asked about seeing his latest nonfiction project, “A Compassionate Spy,” on the big screen at the 1,032-seat Sala Grande in his first-ever Venice Film Festival world premiere.
For this filmmaker, “A Compassionate Spy” is different, too. James’ subjects, one gone since 1999, the other very much with us, are Ted and Joan Hall. Ted Hall was the youngest scientist recruited to work with physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico. He was still a teenager and, like many of his colleagues, left-leaning and increasingly uneasy and conflicted about the weapon they were about to drop on the course of history.
