Based on a true story, "Bridge of Spies" takes us back to the 1960s, right in the middle of the Cold War. Adam Stockhausen does a commendable job of recreating the mood of the times with his production design, while cinematographer Janusz Kamiński takes us through a visceral journey from portraying the paranoia within America to the tumult in a divided Berlin at the peak of Cold War tensions.

Tom Hanks delivers an exceptional performance as James Donovan, an insurance lawyer who is designated the task of representing Rudolph Abel –- a Soviet spy. As he undertakes the job, Donovan realizes the humanity of his client and develops a special bond with him.

Donovan’s commitment to get justice for his client takes him to an international adventure deep in the midst of spies, espionage and diplomatic negotiations. Mark Rylance does a masterful and understated job in a supporting role as Rudolph Abel.

The narrative of an ordinary person forced into a mission of extraordinary magnitude is a familiar Spielberg archetype. What makes this one special is the touch of the Coen brothers, who add their unique flavor of razor sharp wit and cynicism to the script.

Bridge of Spies is quite revolutionary as juxtaposed to past American cinematic portrayals of the Cold War in the sense that it takes a humanistic and compassionate approach towards the Soviet spy and propagates the idea of accepting and understanding one another.

Neon Tommy spoke to Steven Spielberg about his latest gem and the maverick director had a lot to share.

NT: What made you choose to direct this film and why is this story relevant?

SS: Well I think this story is only as relevant as the people who find that kind of story interesting. I don’t ever wanna impose what I find relevant on others who might not but I feel just speaking personally that somebody that has the talent to negotiate and not intimidate, to cajole, not threaten, to basically compromise is something that this world needs a lot more of that we’re just not getting and we find ourselves in a lot of bad situations diplomatically with nations all over this world.

And I just find that Donovan, the real James Donovan, played very authentically by Tom Hanks is a great example of what we need more of today not only in the diplomatic world but on Capitol Hill and just the way people should be more patient with each other in trying to figure out or trying to celebrate what makes us different and not being so quick to judge someone who is not the same as us.

NT: What is it about the Coen brothers that makes them a fit in this film?

SS: Well the film started with Matt Sherman, a wonderful playwright from the United Kingdom, from England and he’s the one who found the story. I never heard of Donovan or Abel. I knew about Gary Powers. I knew nothing about the spy swap or about all of this or what was happening during this, this almost secret history of the KGB versus the CIA in those days. So this writer from England brought me the story and it took an English writer to wake this American up about a purely American story and then although American German or even American Russian story and maybe really marvel at everything he construed.

But I wanted to go really deep into the characters and I wanted to also find irony because I think there’s great irony in history and the people who do the best irony that I know are Joel and Ethan Coen and I asked them if they wanted to work on the script and they did about four or five versions, not different versions but four or five passes on their rewrite and really, really deepened the characters and found a lot of irony and of course along with irony comes humor and every movie needs humor.

NT: The production design of this film is lush detailed. Can you describe the process that you and Adam went through to achieve the realistic look for the sets.

SS: I can easily say that Adam is a sort of a product of copious and adamant research. Adam before he presented me with any of his own artistic interpretations showed me what life was like both here and abroad especially in East Germany between 1957 and 1961.

So he made a presentation to me when I first hired him to do a picture of some tremendous photographs from not just Life Magazine but from a lot of the German outlets as well including a lot of pictures from the National Geographic and a lot of really great I guess you’d call them landscape photography by very well-known photographers of that period. So he presented me with tremendous amount of research just because he wanted to capture the authenticity of what it was like both living in America during that very paranoid time and justifiably paranoid time and what it was like existing in East Germany.

NT: How much of a role do you play as an educator when directing historical fiction?

SS: Well to begin with my imagination has always been my best friend especially when I was younger and making all those early movies and then when I became a father science fiction is something I love and it’s something I completely and periodically return to. But when I became a dad for the first time life took a very sort of serious turn and I just became concerned about something I was never concerned about which was the future of my children because I didn’t have any children to be concerned about their future.

When I started having kids it, it made me look ahead and then that forced me to look back ‘cause I’ve always loved history. I excelled in history at school probably not much else. I was a good history student and history I’ve always said to my kids you, you can’t go forward unless you know where all of us collectively have been and so I’ve always had this interest in historical subjects, in biographies but I never really turned to that until I got serious about being a parent.

NT: What do you think has changed about the types of stories and characters that draw you in?

SS: In the early part of my career I was always drawn in by characters. Everything I ever did was character based. Maybe my first movie about the truck chasing the car, it’s called "Duel," even though it’s a big scary truck and a little red car, there would be no story if there was a human being we cared about driving the little red valiant. And so all of my movies have really been about the characters but throughout my earlier concepts or big notions for movies in the 70s and 80s sometimes upstage the characters that were really making those stories believable and yet a lot of credit was going just for the concept.

Dinosaurs, aliens landing in Wyoming, hunting the waters of Amenity Island. I mean those were, big broad movie concepts but none of those films would have succeeded without the characters that populated them. And my feeling today as I’ve gotten older and the concepts have maybe gotten smaller. They’ve only gotten smaller because the characters have gotten bigger and I’m much more interested in focusing my attention on really interesting people like the character of Rudolf Abel and the character of James Donovan played by Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance. Those are the kinds of stories that really interest me today.

"Bridge of Spies" is now open in theatres. Don’t miss it. Watch the trailer below.

Reach Staff Reporter Adi Radia here. Follow him on Twitter here.