Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (novel, miniseries, and forthcoming film to be directed by Tomas Alfredson)

the film of Frost/Nixon was appalling.

he is def. a UK mythologist, and i think that in viewing frost/nixon film as a brit lampoon of american corruption there is ... something ... to be said for it. not that it's good, mind you.

unfortunately, he didn't understand Nixon.

"trust ... no one."

― tylerw, Thursday, June 30, 2011 5:44 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark

lol otm, 24 seconds in.

not sure what p.morgan has to do with this though?

ah, I looked at the first post where they said he'd be writing the adap -- wiser heads prevailed!

Still, I think this story is made for a longer form.

re-reading this right now. great.

Did a reread of Tinker Tailor over the last couple of days here -- first time I'd done so in a couple of decades. Very glad too (sticking to the no spoilers rule proposed upthread) that I had just forgotten who the mole was; I remember the actor in question from the miniseries but I'd forgotten which role he'd played, so the ending was a surprise all over again. A lot of what was enjoyably strange about the book to me has become a little less so now (thanks to actually going to the UK for visits, for a start) -- and I also remember the use of terms like 'lamplighters' strangely romantic and which remain so, something that turns the mundane into a little something else -- while above all else the sheer knife-edge tautness in a dingy setting remains intact. Related to that, from up above:

Not sure le Carré gives a hoot about communism either way - I think he's more interested in the mechanics of defection...Will say that what marks out the early novels is the indifference to English society. This is what we're trying to protect?

Which is very interesting in a reread: Le Carre's London, at least in this novel, often feels empty. It's as if it was nothing but a lot of buildings in which a few people can be found, a number of them containing multiple people (the Circus, a club or bar or two) but mostly containing two or three or even just one. As such it's one of Le Carre's sharpest gifts because he recognizes the reduction of the individual perspective to just that scope; if all you're focusing on is something small or something removed, the exact day-to-day surroundings of millions of people and all that entails makes no impact. At the same time it also makes me think of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books which are explicitly about a theme of a defective/decayed England in structure and form; London as a vast rambling castle like Gormenghast where people work in odd nooks and are seemingly removed from most non-work human contact beyond an offhand 'oh yeah, that' feeling. Meantime the softest side of the whole story comes from the scenes in the school where Prideaux is laying low as a teacher; I think the character of Roach is interesting in retrospect not merely as a way to introduce Prideaux without actually going into any detail about him but also to self-consciously contrast the world of the Circus with an unknowing, naive and unsettled perspective, shaped by divorce and family turmoil (in turn set against Smiley's own ruminations on Ann). But to return to the question of the school: its own circle of petty grievances and victories becomes at once a symbol of what's supposed to be 'protected' and what might not be worth protecting as it stands, a country idyll of sorts -- yet in the end the story begins and ends there, and through Roach's eyes.

Bits in the trailer do make me wonder more now about how the story is going to be shaped; I gather Istanbul stands in for Hong Kong, fair enough, but referencing things like a resultant nuclear war and more puts in a different kind of urgency to it. Still that could just be a quick trailer specific bait-and-switch. Reread did confirm there is a bit in the Karla interrogation scene where Smiley mentions or thinks something along the 'we are not so very different' line so hey.

Anyway, time to watch the miniseries again properly.

nice post, ned. just finished re-reading last night. honestly the thing that stuck out to me was the almost satirical elements of lecarre's depiction of the circus -- it's not quite Catch 22, but it's getting there?

Great post, Ned. I will admit I have never gotten around to reading this book, I should probably do this before summer ends.

It's great.

I can't imagine a movie being a quarter as good as the Guiness miniseries.

Although cast is pretty impressive.

Thanks all. Just rewatched the first episode today as well (the original seven episode series rather than the US-adapted six episode); if the movie by default can't maintain the slow, easy unfolding of the story then the TV version does point the way on how to simplify the book's in medias res structure. (I suspect the couple of shots in the trailer showing the heads of the Circus around a table is meant to mimic the opening shot of the miniseries, though unsprisingly the movie version feels rather more glamorous, just.) Also I'd forgotten that the TV version apparently substitutes Lisbon for Hong Kong but I'll wait to see what the second episode is like.

Seeing Guinness again in the role in full via that first episode really is a masterpiece. The antithesis of verbose, making every word count, with maybe the sole exception of when he's alone, venting and angry, and even that is clipped.

An advantage of the book is that while Smiley as a character obviously exists in previous books as discussed above, you really can take him straight from the start via the book etc., you don't need the earlier stuff though it does provide some context and background by default.

honestly the thing that stuck out to me was the almost satirical elements of lecarre's depiction of the circus -- it's not quite Catch 22, but it's getting there?

There's definitely a very dry humor at many points but Le Carre isn't even aiming for black comedy as such, it's more like "Well, it would be this, wouldn't it." On that front it's almost more like Beckett.

Well, I remember who the mole is, maybe cuz I watched the series 5-6 years ago.

Who is playing Karla?

Ironic that Oldman is not enough of an old man, technically... Also, on the iMdB it says he watched Guinness as part of his preparation! I've never heard of an actor saying something like that about an inherited role.

What about Ewan McGregor also watching Guinness?

xp to ned yeah, i don't think that is really lecarre's aim, but the absurdity of espionage/double agents/triple crossing/etc made it feel like a different author might've taken it in full satire mode.

well, McGregor was doing a bloody impression, plus he wasn't doing the *same* material.

My problem w/ de Niro's CIA film was that stuff is best played as dark comedy.

like Our Man in Havana?

"Who is playing Karla?"

Karla isn't in TTSS.

Hopefully Picard will play him again!

Not in the film? Cos he's in the book/BBC miniseries. xpost

picard has been practicing his steely stare.

Yeah, I don't remember seeing Smiley's People! Wikipedia says Stewart was in both.

it should be michael fassbender. or the other one.

xpost

smiley's people is a bit of a letdown after TTSS

I think he's only in Smiley's People.

In the mini-series.

yes Alfred, my fave spy films are probably Our Man in Havana and The In-Laws.

has anyone seen Richard Burton in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold?

I don't think he actually appears in the book either, but it's been years.

xp It's awesome.

he has one scene in TTSS

The Deadly Affair is unfortunately fairly weak. Don't bother with it.

xp It must be uncredited cuz he's not in IMDB.

which of the two series has the flashback where Smiley (Guinness w/ a dye job) is talking to Stewart in a cell?

xxxp: that's the one, right?

And I think he only has one scene in Smiley's People.

it's been years since I've watched The Spy Who Came In...; perhaps too dour for its own good. But Burton has his best role after George in WAOVW?

iMdB does not always have complete credits. And maybe PS was uncredited cuz he doesn't say anything?

both series are on PS's page:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001772/

hope karla is in the new one. could be a secret cameo or s.thing. at least in the miniseries it's pretty important.

it's a pretty big part of TTSS (the book) -- can't see how they would leave it out?

it'll probably be shia lebeauoffff

patrick stewart plays karla in a flashback scene in the original tv series, but has no lines--smiley is telling guillam about the one time he met karla, in an indian prison. as in the miniseries, he doesnt "appear" in the book except in that story

I see Stephen Rea in the new film's credits, with no character name!

A slow percolating thought as well which is probably applicable to Le Carre's work as a whole is how little he evinces any interest in the general trappings of the regimes in question. Using Tinker Tailor as an explicit example, the most there is of an English structure as personified/incorporated is the figure of the Minister above Lacon, who is a cameo at best, as well as 'Whitehall' as general point of reference. Similarly both the Americans and Russians are discussed in generalities and the broadest of strokes. In part this approach is understandably contextual (why bother explaining what is already apparent), but, especially as history does change even in the short term, it reduces all the public faces of the regimes to grey, irrelevant background, with the logic of the systems themselves being the only driving force, as previously noted on the thread. If it reminds me of anything it's almost Orwell and 1984, only without even a Big Brother figure as a prop.

Peter Morgan is an exec producer on this film, which explains why bloody David Frost is in it.

different one! that was a head-scratcher.

there are two David Frosts?! What a plague.

xp

there is a little more than the logic of the systems tho, which is represented (to Smiley at least) by Karla. Smiley may not be able to articulate what it is that he's working to protect, but Karla is the personification of what he's protecting it from. that single meeting, and Smiley's humiliation by Karla - which perhaps he has never overcome, and which perhaps is more painful and formative than anything Ann does to him - comes to define the difference between Us and Them in his head. to Smiley at least, Karla is the monstrous product of a system that must be monstrous itself. how much the author or the reader shares that assumption may vary.

i wd say that The Honourable Schoolboy as a novel makes me question le Carre's detachment and sophistication a fair bit.

There's a logic to Karla's personification as you describe; at the same time he's not some Blofeld/Fu Manchu type but somebody equally beholden to his own bureaucratic ups and downs, falling out of favor with Moscow at points and ultimately creating his own private empire precisely to shield himself. Granted if the distinction between the systems is that one side fires/forcibly retires you when you screw up and the other one wonders whether shooting you or the gulag is better then your point is clear and I'd say you're correct that ultimately Smiley, however frustrated he is with much of his system, ultimately 'illusionless,' is immovable from a perhaps reflexive defense of a certain England -- or alternately a certain idealized English/aesthetic existence (his German poets, etc.; the bit of art crit that sneak in throughout the novel add to that function) -- as opposed to a seemingly unknowable set of concerns. (Which makes Smiley's People of interest in that it ultimately, contextually and more, 'humanizes' Karla, just.)

i think it starts off as 'Karla won't/is incapable of "playing the game"' and winds up at his having something of the nature of a very sophisticated machine in Smiley's imagination - his motivations, his calculations, are just about logically explicable to Smiley but the world that created him isn't? Smiley seems to have much less trouble understanding the mole for example, and as such his emotional attitude is clearer.

Then again, wouldn't that be the case, that we know something closer to home no matter what home is.

I wonder if time hasn't changed our thoughts about Russia as 'the other' in turn. Growing up in the seventies and well into the eighties I seemed to only hear about Russia as this place literally shut off from everything and weirdly isolated, a classic perception of trying to fit in a consistent take on a place with little experience to hand; for many Le Carre readers alive at that time it was probably similar. Of course Russia as place or as regime doesn't directly appear in the book at all, everything is at most secondhand.