Mother Night

“The truth is more shocking than the uniform he wears... HE WAS AN AMERICAN SPY.”

Howard Campbell (Nick Nolte), an American playwright, spent World War II broadcasting Nazi propaganda from Berlin, and only a handful of people know he was passing secrets to the Allies the whole time. After the war he lives under a false name in a cramped New York apartment, unable to prove what he really was. Keith Gordon, adapting Kurt Vonnegut's novel, keeps the camera close on Nolte's tired face and lets the silences run long.