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

This 1974 portrait of David Bowie was part of an all day studio session in Los Angeles to promote the Diamond Dogs album. Bowie picked up the scissors absent-mindedly and O'Neill decided to keep them in the shoot to symbolize the cutting edge nature of Bowie's music.

haha awesome

i feel smiley was as likely to be using those scissors as he was to be listening to aladdin sane as he stuck tiny photos onto chesspieces

suppose if he'd absent-mindedly picked up a pile of shite o'neill would have probably asked him put it down for the photos

Only anachronism I noticed in this was during the scene where Irina was wheeled onto the boat to Odessa, where a huge recent-looking poster/banner could be seen at the left-hand side of the shot (the design style and typefaces seemed more early-to-mid 2000's than 1973. Yes, I'm a design nerd). Also, a friend pointed out that some scenes had speed bumps in shot?

Silliness aside, loved it.

"bowie absent-mindedly picked up a return-to form"

possible sensible suggestion for the wooden gizmo that b.roach makes = a v-thing to pull one's boots off with (no wonder prideaux yelled at him)

finally reading j.sutherland's essay on TTSS in S&S: tempted to liveblog this too, it seems quite poor :(

it's a wooden prototype for what eventually became that v-slicer vegetable cutting wondertool advertised on uk living after 2.00am

saw this last night. i think i might have enjoyed it more were i not in the middle of a godawful headache, such that each shot's lighting and sound produced a reaction in terms of pain before i got to consider aesthetics -- it was aight tho

heard from the row behind: "man, there was such great 50s design in that film"

okay something of a SPOILER follows

what's the logic of guillam -- after smiley warns him that those on top will now have their eye on him -- immediately throwing his boyfriend out? is the idea that he's so gauche that he thinks 'they' will care enough to use it against him?

actually, okay, it's established that he genuinely doesn't want other people aware -- viz. the play he makes of flirting with the office staff and such -- it just seemed a weird revision to the plot, when stuff like haydon and prideaux is an open secret. & i guess it's better than the hippie girlfriend, & that shot of cumberbatch crying was one of the more affecting moments

yeah, i think that haydn and prideaux being an open secret didn't necessarily exclude the possibility that the same thing could be used against guillam if necessary

yes i think it's odd: there's actually very little in the film -- except the bill roach stuff? -- that isn't directly plot-driving, and that bit really isn't, so it sticks out

i: is it a general point about the dangers of being gay in the secret service in the early 70s? prob true but kind of a digression -- and why is it only suddenly now that guillam realises this?
ii: is it there as a marker of what danger guillam suddenly realises they're actually in? prob true but not well set up: we don't actually get a sense they're being watched (and they apparently bundle toby e into a car right outside the circus: certainly nearby)
iii: is it just character-colour? if so why only for PG?
iv: is there a ppl-wearing-rugs-are-a-kind-of-mole counter-textual subtext? <--- this (since his boyf is bald)

also: is prideaux (mark strong in a rug) crying at the xmas party bcz he too was watching haydon squeezing lady ann's bottom?

ps Toby Jones has such an awesome resume: Robert Cecil 1st Earl of Salisbury, William Hogarth, Daniel Quilp, Truman Capote, Arnim Zola, Percy Alleline, Karl Rove, Dobby the house elf

think that it's one of quite a few ways we can link guillam to haydon? Homosexual but plays the ladies man, possibly a little idealistic for the role, maybe there's more but off the top of my head....

(Arnim Zola is the evil-doctor minion in Capt America not the French novelist: muddlingly enough I saw Capt Am the day before I saw TTSS)

"link" in what sense though? that he's been his lover? that he idolises and imitates him? that he's exposed bcz all gay ppl are secretly pals? if yr right it underlines that complaint that they don't really do enough work to guild haydon up into the god he is in the book -- which you can kind of do without plotwise, but it removes quite a lot of what's at stake in his exposure (which is pretty much all the british secret service's internal glamour)

prideaux was crying? whenever it was my observational skills had plainly gone to shit by that point

kind of curious if this movie is followable if you come in blind, at least without some kind of cheat sheet -- i read it a while ago & i've been following this thread so i had the list of names primed already -- but it seems like a hell of a lot of people to keep track of

which conversely was one of the things i didn't like about it! that it had to start with john hurt explaining THERE IS A MOLE! AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL! and that there had to be periodic flashbacks with smiley picturing them all in the soundless room. or shots of the bloody chess set.

(xpost.)

'link' in that guillam is a shadow-version of haydon, i thought he meant

otoh i liked that the corniest Spy Movie Lines -- "we're not so very different, you and i" -- "we're on the same side, george" -- were kind of recontextualised -- toby aware of the limpness of it as he says it, oldman in that very uncomfortable too-close-up address to an absent karla communicating: i don't know what, exactly

i thought the talking-to-an-empty-chair bit was fucking embarrassing tbf

'link' in that guillam is a shadow-version of haydon: not i think well achieved by the film on its own, but i find it REALLY hard to unremember what i (often unhelpfully) know from the book as you can image, since (a) i reread it last week and (b) i wrote it all down like an idiot!

hence the prob i had with that boyf-dumping scene was that i had too many conflicting ways of possibly reading it, w/o any clues, so it jumped right out as a bit of a weird change to decide on -- if i could grasp their rationale instantly i wouldn't have been nagged by it (this is partly a result of the way i think about films and books and etc anyway: "ok so why make this move here?" all the time)

yeah, link was just a story device, i meant.

Followed it without a cheatsheet btw, got a little muddled before the big unveiling but otherwise fine.

on the FT thread andrew f just suggested that the "guillam is gay" scene is a way of firmly saying "we the film makers don't consider gay men to be obvious by-definition villains DO YOU SEE"

which if true is commendable in a kind of well-good-for-you-lads way, but (again) needs to actually read to justify itself, and didn't (proof = me not reading this)

it's daft anyway cos haydon isn't strictly homosexual; he bats for both teams DO YOU SEE

haha yeah but having guillam dump a poly gf/bf couple was shot down during early script conferences

it was the 70s, buckaroo

do the polymath

cf also david bowie-endorsed plastic-handled scissors, symbol of smiley's cutting-edge sexuality

lol

I've never read the book, never seen the mini-series, didn't know the reveal. The film made sense to me, in a I'd-need-to-watch-it-several-more-times-to get-it-all kind of way. None of the characters were especially rounded out, but there was a pretty impressively deep sense of confused dread about the thing. I guess that's what I responded to.

Great film but that ending montage was shamefully incongruous. Why kill the tone of the whole thing with that awful "and they all lived happily ever after, lol!!!" feeling.

i thought the end was really sinister! proof if proof be need be that the real mole was actually SMILEY ALL ALONG

ugh no it was awful imo..."look he's back with his wife and now he's the boss". it should have ended with him watching tv, smoking.

oh and colin firth has found his ideal role - sleazy posh guy who sleeps with other people's wives

firth should play david cameron

only problem with end was that it needed 'stayin alive' playin over it and oldman should have had a pimp cane

He is the boss in the next book. Dunno if plans are afoot to make the rest of the trilogy though.

wld be first in line for a sequel to TTSS where toby jones turns up at the circus in full arnim zola clobber:

http://static2.aintitcool.com/images2009/ArnimZola.jpg

loved this, bloody fatastic camerawork! the best shot film i've seen for years. amazed at how different Peter is in the film to the tv show. in the series he was almost light relief at times; no recollection of him beating the shit out of Tarr and freaking out, crying etc. Cumberbatch was great mind.

thoroughly enjoyed it, tho it has enough flaws on its own terms - the end scene radiates too much quiet triumph, quite out of tone for the rest of the movie, and there's some other silliness/poor writing imo. but as a whole, this was absorbing and coherent and straight pleasurable.

btw i think the wooden gizmo is a wedge for improving the stability of Prideaux' caravan, quite possibly as per the book.

wd've liked it a bit denser and darker tbh

Agree totally about the last montage, can't fathom how wildly out of step with the film it is.

That scene at Wimpy was hilarious.

Disappointed they didn't cast Ann (guess she sn't described in the book?). Probably prefer the ending of the TV series (Smiley taken down a peg) but didn't mind the montage too much, partly bcz of the spin Mark gives on it.

Mark's spin is fun and made me reconsider but I don't buy it really. Ann was cast, I think the actress is credited, but her anonymity reminded me of Captain Mainwaring's wife in Dad's Army which wasn't ideal.

Yeah exactly, a messageboard lol doesn't really convince me of much.

i'm trying not to compare film to book cos these things shd stand on their own but there's no sense at the end of the movie of "oh shit we've had a mole in the org for the last umpteen years the Circus is completely fucked"

Yeah and it's like everything is now GREAT and he's happy plus oh look he's back with his wife. It's moronic as an ending.

i liked the ending but it does make the film a future candidate for..
Movies wherein the last scene clearly indicates that the makers had a sequel planned, but no sequel came after it.

I read Smiley's satisfaction at sitting at the head of that table as drenched in irony, given the rest of the film.

that whole section at the end (especially Peter's smile) is a bit shameless in it's attempt to please the audience but you know.. it's a 21st century movie not a seven hour 1970s BBC series or whatevs so i think we have to cut em some slack.