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

caek i can send a copy if you want? i just found three in the back room + i am pretty sure there is a whole box of them somewhere

Much has been written about Harold Wilson and MI5, some of it wildly inaccurate. But as far as I am concerned, the story started with the premature death of Hugh Gaitskell in 1963.

this man is a marvelous bibble.

Here's how the Wilson theory came about, from Philip Knightley's LRB review of the Mangold biog of Angleton:

In 1962 Angleton’s office family was joined by Anatoly Golitsyn, a KGB officer who had defected the previous year in Helsinki. The two men quickly formed a professional rapport. Golitsyn, a heavy Ukrainian, had hard-line views about the ruthlessness, single-mindedness and Machiavellian cunning of the KGB, against which the flabby Western intelligence agencies were doomed. These views coincided with those of Angleton and when Golitsyn eventually revealed the KGB’s master conspiracy plan, Angleton was all too ready to believe it.

There were two KGBs, Golitsyn said. The West was doing battle with the external one and thought it was coping. But there was another, deeper KGB which was running a long-term operation to destroy the West. The reasoning of the second KGB went as follows. It was useless to devote resources to detecting and catching Western spies sent against the Soviet Union. The West would simply send more. A much better way was to gain secret control of the West’s major intelligence service, the CIA, by recruiting moles among its officers and by sending false defectors. These false detectors could feed the CIA wrong information about the Soviet Union and the moles could report on how this information was being received. Gradually the CIA’s perception of reality could be distorted to suit Soviet aims and the CIA would, in effect, come under Moscow’s control. Once this happened, all the Western spies in the Soviet Union would be of no use whatsoever. The KGB would be running the intelligence world.

Golitsyn claimed that this operation was already under way and that Western intelligence was riddled with Soviet moles. He was too clever to claim that the limited access he’d had to KGB archives before he defected enabled him to name these traitors, but, he said, if allowed to look at the CIA’s files he would be able to identify suspicious characteristics which would point to possibly guilty men. Angleton was convinced, and over the years, thanks to Angleton’s influence in the Western intelligence community, Golitsyn saw the files of the CIA, Britain’s SIS and M15 and France’s SDECE and DST. It must be said that Golitsyn had some successes in providing clues that helped identify such spies as the Admiralty clerk William John Vassall; Georges Paques, a French officer in Nato; and Hugh Hambleton, a Canadian professor. But although he insisted that there must be moles in the CIA, he never found one. Instead, over the years, his list of suspects in the West became more and more outrageous. They included Harold Wilson, Olaf Palme, Willy Brandt, Armand Hammer, Averell Harriman, Lester Pearson and Henry Kissinger. They also included every Soviet defector who had come after him. These men had been sent, Golitsyn said, to discredit him because the KGB knew how dangerous he was to their master plan.

Karla's deployment of Golitsyn was masterly.

The vastness was mistaken, it was a small aggressive faction, and it was MI6 not MI5, but the fact of it was real. There's a pretty good book about it all by Robin Ramsey and Stephen Dorril called Smear!

Ramsay/Dorril a funny pair - I called up a stack of Lobster magazine from a library once - odd combination of slightly flakey mind-control cia stuff with super-detailed Clockwork Orange plot tracing, and odd analyses of 70s/80s policy. Wouldn't mind going through them again - & I keep meaning to read books by one or the other of them.

oh, just ordered Knightley's The Second Oldest Profession: The Spy as Bureaucrat, Patriot, Fantasist and Whore. Looked like it might be interesting.

one of the Lobster guys used to be Hull-based iirc - never sure how much was brilliant investigative reporting and how much was internal psycho-geography at its furthest out

thomp have messaged you via ilx

Rikki "caek" Tarr has sent a field report and needs debriefing.

uncensored liveblog now posted over at freaky trigger: do not read if you want to remain a molevirgin

the TTSS film would intrigue me more if it was done closer in tone to Burn After Reading

following up the "oafish twerps and loonies" angle

http://www.popstarsplus.com/images/DonAdamsPicture.jpg

in fact a searing expose^^^

as witness: p.wright's hat at last explained

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/135000/images/_139152_peter_wright300.jpg http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/135000/images/_139152_peter_wright300.jpg

sigh, i mean:

http://0.tqn.com/d/diyfashion/1/0/e/T/-/-/Spy_vs_Spy_Cosplay_Comic-Con.jpg http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/135000/images/_139152_peter_wright300.jpg

Meantime:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/sep/15/tinker-tailor-soldier-spy-film-review

Agree with the Graun's review. Also, the film is very grainy a la Black Swan, which eccentuates the stifling fag-ash greyness of it. Having never read the book nor watched the TV adap, I had no cue about the outcome going in, but I was able to guess the mole purely by the casting.
Liked it though. It captures the 1970s well and without resorting to smother everything in brown, as so often happens.
Tom Hardy's wig deserves a Bafta for Best Supporting character.

saw it this afternoon, without having read the book or seen the miniseries - but i think i'd been somehow spoiler'd into knowing who the mole was already? it didn't matter much to my enjoyment, but i did wonder how the subtlety of the film would come across to someone with no foreknowledge.

tom hardy's wig was a marvel and a wonder; the national anthem scene was rather excellent.

the earlier scenes were for me slightly overshadowed by simon mcburney's nose in sharp profile, which made him seem like a character drawn by a cartoonist.

the national anthem scene was rather excellent

The Christmas party? That was amazing.

that bit of the christmas party - i hope it isn't SPOILERS to say that I rather admired the economy of the use of the christmas party flashback.

that scene was as deft as the film got, to me; i wasn't bowled over by its economy elsewhere, really, but it was v confident & graceful in plotting the few significant exchanges in that scene

wasn't impressed at all :(

best thing about it was the BLOKES in the row in front, who had obviously turned up expecting the new bond film, bellowing WHAT THE FUCK WAS THIS FUCKING SHIT I'M GETTING MY FUCKING MONEY BACK as the credits rolled

Agree with the comments re: dinner party as the highlight. It was worth doing (re-arranging to what I guess is a more faithful versh re: chronology) but mostly fell off when I got to comparing certain scenes to the BBC series: Smiley and Connie in the film has some nice comedy tinged w/sadness but I prefer the Beeb's versh in which Smiley dishes out roughly to snap her out of nostalgia for 'her lovely boys'. Weird bcz you could get that kind of perf out of Oldham but he was directed to be more stiff - not sure how the bk wd have it, wouldn't say I care.

Saw it this evening. Thought it was a bit mannered and heavy handed and Gary Oldman's acting self-consciously a performance.

Despite that I quite enjoyed the film because I enjoy watching performances.

The script is awful though.

pointless and popular feeling I'm sure and not really a complaint but preferred the telly cast and the v different tone of some sections and characters - particularly tarr and connie. seems a funny thing to say too since the telly one must have been drawn out at least as much as the movie but it did feel to me like it dragged rather more - maybe just means the story better suits a serial to spread the slow pacing which of course is fundamental out a bit. it was always going to be compared to the telly one though. funny that smiley's trusted coterie was made up of two of the modern era's greatest fictional minds: sherlock holmes and trigger. colin firth's zoo enclosure was weird. was relieved we didn't see smiley's nipples during the pond-swimming scenes.

i ploughed through the tv series yesterday, it doesn't drag at all even though yes it's just people in rooms - this is because when in those rooms they actually have conversations of substance rather than just exchange two lines and stare out the window as in the film

Kudos for the quality staring though...

so is there a reason i can't find this movie anywhere within 50 miles?

it's undercover

brevity

rumour has it it's using the identity of 'marley & me' so look for that

:)

^ if you see this man pls notify the authorities

Didn't care for this much. Too compressed (lots of being led by the nose in terms of getting from plot point A to plot point B via dialogue/voiceover) and at the same time too many wasted minutes, e.g the walk of shame at the start. I know this killed two other birds, viz showed us the layout of the Circus and it was something to post the opening credits over but it just looked silly. Would have liked more screen time for Alleline, Bland and especially Esterhase to fill out their characters a bit. Oldman doesn't get an "oh, fuck" moment - see comments upthread about Guinness removing the glasses and putting them back on. So you never quite believe he's anything other than a doormat e.g. the scene where he's putting the Minister straight about Witchcraft just jars.

Enjoyed the scenes where Guillam's at the Circus second time round, but that was about it.

The Circus irritated me a bit, actually. Long time since I've read the novels, but isn't it called The Circus cos it's a shabby rabbit warren on Cambridge Circus, rather than a purpose built open-plan warehouse style place? The old identity of the Circus is kind of crucial - the building embodies the faults of the organisation it houses - old fashioned, labyrinthine, unfit for purpose, on the brink of collapse.

So you never quite believe he's anything other than a doormat

with an unfortunate resemblance to john major, making the final few shots of the film unintentionally comical

ok here is the REAL question: what is the wooden gizmo little bill roach makes and brings to prideaux at the end of the film?

also: IRL what is the building that played the circus, and where is it in london?

blythe house, west kensington

yes I was disappointed that we didn't find out about the wooden thing! maybe in the next movie?

i am hoping the next film continues the harry potter-ish element, like the FLAMING OWL QUIDDITCH moment

haha yeah

++ loved the look, mise en scene somewhere between 10 rillington place and brazil (with a dash of the ipcress file); i think tomas alfredson's sense of place is strong anyway, as is JLC's of course, and they compliment one another here
-- gary oldman seemed to be playing smiley as a man in a rubber alec guinness mask; he has the voice down but you felt he was often just standing there saying "listen! i have the accent down!" (deep caveat: if alfredson's conception is mission impossibly and oldman was actually playing a mole in an alec guinness mask)
++ some of the second-rung actors were excellent (BC = guillam; MS = prideaux; KB = connie obviously; JH + control) (and LACON: i am a huge giant fan of simon mcburney as near-walk-on in "popular" drama, he is often massively cheeky and scene-stealing in a subtle way, and was here too) -- interestingly mcburney was probably the most effective at overly "playing" a double (the little fellow who played esterhase was the worst: but only one of the mole-suspects was presented as remotely attractive) (making it easy to guess which one was the mole)
-- it didn't solve and i think exacerbated the tension between the two species of book JLC tries to pass of as one; one a fraught procedural about precision of observation (where the unglam uber-technician turns out champ), and one a sententious lament about the morality of geo-political manouevre by other means <-- the second is by a long way the least interesting, jlc is shrewd about (non-female) people but windy at best when he turns this into aggregate generalised form... and this film did not allow space for much of the former, in fact: the detecting was as nugatory as the "playing double" was
++ it did actually clarify a few plot points in the original!

forgot to say: i strongly feel alfredson is of the "secret intelligence is a worthless activity, and besides these men were drunks and clowns" school = VG TICK in ref my own equivalent prejudices

despite the ultra-grimy mise en scene, this is anything but a work of sociological or historical realism: no such milieu ever existed, and the director is unbothered if we leave the cinema thinking this

only period detail i found slightly 'off' = smiley eating in a wimpey bar!

what's wrong with wimpy? he *was* using a knife and fork

i was meant to be seeing this this evening, & the idea that he is just doing an alec guinness impersonation put me off, but the idea that he eats in a wimpy using a knife and fork actually leaves me feeling into it again

everybody ate w a knife and fork in a wimpy in the 70s! i just think smiley, spooks in general, were a bit m class for a burger joint in the 1970s - but maybe it is 'deep cover'

thought this was excellent, found it a very immersive viewing experience, good performances- not having read the book nor seen the bbc version i still found it ok to follow.

maybe it was a joke that everything moves slowly even the fast food

wimpy existed in 1973! they were the first UK burger places iirc -- and the fact they eat at one is taken from the book

the one point where i was thrown out of story into overt anachronism watch was that -- in his makeshift investigation headquarters -- smiley appeared to have some scissors with black plastic handles: I DON'T REMEMBER THESE IN MY YOUTH, and it made me go AHA! (tho i may be completely wrong, but i think he would have old-school all-metal scissors)

oldman is the most disappointing element i think: and really all this proves is that smiley is basically a flawed and implausible character, a problem that guinness alone has solved to date

it's not called a wimpy in the book