Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: Grade A

A

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011)

Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Toby Jones, David Dencik, Benedict Cumberbatch. Director Tomas Alfredson.

Gary Oldman gives a loving homage to Alec Guinness, who played the main character in the 1979 BBC television series based on the John Le Carre novel. I never thought anyone could play that role again after Guinness. But Oldman absolutely nails it, even down to the exact pace of speech.

George Smiley (Oldman) is retired MI6, brought out of retirement by the chief, who is dying, to find a Soviet mole in the spy agency during the Cold War. Smiley learns there are six main suspects the chief had been considering, one of them himself. In only a little over 2 hours of screen time, he finds the traitor.

The original BBC story took 7 hours to tell, so it is a remarkable screenwriting achievement to tell the same story in only 2 hours. But as a consequence, the plot is more impressionistic than detailed. Brief scenes hint at relationships that are important but which cannot be spelled out due to the time constraint. Six suspects, after all, is a lot of suspects for one mystery story. Plus, there is the matter of Smiley’s estranged wife, which figures importantly in the story.

But the screenplay is masterful and does its job. I wondered if anyone not familiar with the book or the BBC series would be able to follow the complicated story, and I worried if the movie would make money because of that. But it is making truckloads of money, so I guess it works.

There are some important changes from the original book and series. Some locations are changed (e.g., Hungary instead of Czechoslovakia), and the ending is new, rushed, and a bit contrived, somewhat anticlimactic for that. But overall the story is faithful in spirit to the original (Le Carre is credited as a producer). The music is beautiful, very restrained, and entirely fitting. Costumes and sets are perfection. Cinematography is careful and not a shot is wasted, so I guess that means the editing is also excellent.

At first I resisted Oldman, because I wanted so badly to see Guinness again. But he’s dead, so get over it, I thought, and very soon I accepted Oldman as George Smiley. If he can win me over, he can convince anybody.

The Spy Who Came In From The Cold: Grade A

A
The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (2008)
Richard Burton, Claire Bloom, Oskar Werner; Director Martin Ritt.

This “Criterion” release of the 1965 Le Carre film adaptation is a feast for the eyes. The film is perfectly restored, and black and white has never looked so good. It is stunningly beautiful and perfectly suited to the film noir genre and to the cold war 1960’s. Burton is very good in this role, but I think he was overrated. His acting seems flat and manufactured to me, although some of that is the character portrayed, and some of it legacy of the stage. Claire Bloom does a good job but Oskar Werner’s performance is riveting. For fans of Le Carre, this is a perfect adaptation. It captures the tension, the emotions, and the moral ambiguities of the novel and of that period of history. British spy Leamus (Burton) is supposed to act like a defector to give the East Germans some misinformation in Amsterdam. But they whisk him off to East Berlin and he learns that the British have abandoned him, so he now really is the traitor he was pretending to be. I love the way Le Carre can turn the world inside out like that.

There is a second disk in this edition showing a long, recent interview with Le Carre in which he discusses the making of the film, working with Burton and Ritt; all fascinating stuff, especially where it highlights the different points of view of a writer and a filmmaker. Then there is longish feature which is Le Carre’s autobiography told through film adaptations of his novels, focusing of course on the autobiographical, A Perfect Spy. It seems he has been self-aware all his life (the hindsight of age encourages that view), and exquisitely attuned to subtleties of the human condition. Then there is an extensive 1967 interview with Burton, who is fascinating and disturbing. And much more. Even if you have seen the original movie more than once, this Criterion edition is well worth renting.