First, a tangential note: It’s pretty neat that a film about the dangers of S.H.I.E.L.D. as an offensive and a defensive weapon centers around a character whose trademark is...a shield (that is both an offensive and a defensive weapon). And that, at the climax, his shield winds up at the bottom of the Potomac.
The Winter Soldier is about several things, most obviously the tension between liberty and security. It is also about trust. The trust we place in institutions, and the trust we place in people.
We often trust institutions because of people. Steve Rogers tells the elderly Peggy Carter that he joined S.H.I.E.L.D. largely because she helped to found it. And we in the audience have come to trust S.H.I.E.L.D. because it is led by Nick Fury (who is, let us face it, awesome) and because it employs Phil “first name Agent” Coulson.
But no person is wholly trustworthy. It’s not just that it can be hard to spot the bad guys, though Fury’s wonderful speech about why it took him so long to see through Alexander Pierce (“This man declined the Nobel Peace Prize. He said that peace is not an achievement, but a responsibility. This is why I have trust issues!”) makes that point eloquently. Even the people who are honestly trying to be good guys can be wrong: Project Insight was Fury’s inspiration.
And yet, the solution is NOT never to trust. When Steve tells Pierce that Fury’s last words were a warning to trust no one, Pierce wonders aloud whether that advice also applies to Fury himself. But Steve chooses to trust Fury. Just as Fury himself has chosen to trust Steve.
Trust, insofar as it can be achieved in an imperfect world, must be based on two judgments: a judgment of ends, and a judgment of means. An institution, however noble the ends of its leaders, can only ever be a means. While Steve knows that there is a real difference between Fury and Pierce as regards their ends, he also sees that their means are the same, and he judges that those means are fundamentally flawed. S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t just need to be reformed: it has to go.
Trusting people is more complex. We can judge their trustworthiness based on both the ends they choose and the means they choose to achieve them. And when evaluating a public figure, that may be all we can do: “Captain’s orders,” says the frightened technician who refuses to launch the carriers.
But in the case of those around us, it should always be our goal to see each person as a person. And that brings us to The Winter Soldier’s central relationship. Steve Rogers is as straightforward as they come. Natasha Romanoff is anything but. In most movies, the stage would be set for “opposites attract,” but Natasha’s arrow necklace reminds us why that will not happen. Which makes it all the more interesting that Natasha really cares about Steve. Her matchmaking attempts are not a result of habit: it is hard to imagine the Black Widow taking an interest in the personal lives of those around her. And yet she sees that Steve is lonely, and she does not want him to be alone.
We can trust a person to the extent that they see us as an end, not as a means. Natasha is used to creating personas that people will find useful - nearly always, of course, so that she can use them. “Who do you want me to be?” she asks Steve. “A friend,” he replies. As useful as the Black Widow is, Steve does not value Natasha because she is useful. He values her, period. And in caring about his loneliness, and in fearing rejection when she asks for his trust, she shows that she values him, with or without Captain America’s shield.
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