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starladyTinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Dir. Tomas Alfredson, 2011.
This is an amazing movie--a thriller almost without action, a spy movie with almost no wet work, a drama in which the main character doesn't speak at all for nearly the first twenty minutes. I've never read the book on which it's based, which is apparently drawn from real life (the historical version of the mole at the top of the Circus, as it's called here, blew John le Carre's cover when le Carre was a British field agent), though now I very much want to. Short verdict: AMAZING, SEE IT NOW.
It's the early 1970s in Britain, and the head of the British intelligence service, Control (C in real life) is forced out of his job after an unauthorized operation in Hungary that he set up personally goes south, leaving a British agent in the hands of the Soviets and, presumably, of Karla, as the British call the head of the KGB. Control's right-hand man George Smiley is forced out along with him, and several months later, after Control's death, Smiley is brought back in on the outside by the career head of the Foreign Office to see whether Control's theory--that there's a mole at the top of British intelligence--holds water. With one man on the inside of the Circus, a retired field agent, and a dumpy hotel room, Smiley proves to be perfectly capable of running a frighteningly effective operation; it helps that he clearly plays a long--possibly a decades-long--game.
There's not much I can say about this movie without spoilers, I think, but I was struck by how much it reminded me of The Sandbaggers; it's not difficult at all to imagine this Circus of 1972 becoming the SIS of 1979 in the latter, still trying to entice the Americans into full and equal partnership on the basis of the contacts they can provide inside Moscow and still cutting dangerous corners to try to do it. In the end, the question of who betrayed whom ultimately comes down to questions of love and loyalty, and it's a very nice touch on le Carre's part that the love in question cuts across gender lines without defining the characters as types. The movie's design and costuming is also spot-on; I was particularly impressed at the transformations of Gary Oldman and Benedict Cumberbatch as Smiley and his Circus ally Peter Guillam; Cumberbatch looks human, which is really quite something compared with most of his other roles.The entire cast is stellar, but Oldman in particular stands out for his ability to create a compelling character out of a near-total cypher while keeping us guessing.
This is an amazing movie--a thriller almost without action, a spy movie with almost no wet work, a drama in which the main character doesn't speak at all for nearly the first twenty minutes. I've never read the book on which it's based, which is apparently drawn from real life (the historical version of the mole at the top of the Circus, as it's called here, blew John le Carre's cover when le Carre was a British field agent), though now I very much want to. Short verdict: AMAZING, SEE IT NOW.
It's the early 1970s in Britain, and the head of the British intelligence service, Control (C in real life) is forced out of his job after an unauthorized operation in Hungary that he set up personally goes south, leaving a British agent in the hands of the Soviets and, presumably, of Karla, as the British call the head of the KGB. Control's right-hand man George Smiley is forced out along with him, and several months later, after Control's death, Smiley is brought back in on the outside by the career head of the Foreign Office to see whether Control's theory--that there's a mole at the top of British intelligence--holds water. With one man on the inside of the Circus, a retired field agent, and a dumpy hotel room, Smiley proves to be perfectly capable of running a frighteningly effective operation; it helps that he clearly plays a long--possibly a decades-long--game.
There's not much I can say about this movie without spoilers, I think, but I was struck by how much it reminded me of The Sandbaggers; it's not difficult at all to imagine this Circus of 1972 becoming the SIS of 1979 in the latter, still trying to entice the Americans into full and equal partnership on the basis of the contacts they can provide inside Moscow and still cutting dangerous corners to try to do it. In the end, the question of who betrayed whom ultimately comes down to questions of love and loyalty, and it's a very nice touch on le Carre's part that the love in question cuts across gender lines without defining the characters as types. The movie's design and costuming is also spot-on; I was particularly impressed at the transformations of Gary Oldman and Benedict Cumberbatch as Smiley and his Circus ally Peter Guillam; Cumberbatch looks human, which is really quite something compared with most of his other roles.The entire cast is stellar, but Oldman in particular stands out for his ability to create a compelling character out of a near-total cypher while keeping us guessing.