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

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.

yeah out here in the 21st century we can't be expecting an audience to deal with a downbeat ending, cinemas wd be getting tore up

I read Smiley's satisfaction at sitting at the head of that table as drenched in irony

^ yeah, this. like: it's more a "now i am here and i have no idea if i wanted that" than a "now i am here, hooray!"; likewise ann's return is not actually a triumph for him, & it seems weird to read it thus

(justification in filmic terms - the latter is filmed in deep shadow from the head of the stairs, or something like; and the former ends with a fairly abrupt smash cut to black)

ha you guys are nuts, the ending is not remotely ironic, it's meant to be smiley totally kicking the door in

the former ends after he's exchanged a knowing smile with Guillam on his triumphal march to the top table, if Oldman's playing ambivalence at the end there then he fluffs it imo

i'll give you that "oh she's back" is dealt with a bit more subtly

yeah i think the (fluffed?) attempt at formal symmetry with the walk-of-shame at the beginning undercuts the ambivalence (i want to be) there -- still, though. i like it more my way.

justification of "now i am here and i have no idea if i wanted that" in mise-en-scene terms: given his known tastes in decor and etc (which we know from seeing the tasteful olden-times interiors of his house), he is sat in front of that screamingly 70s orange wallpaper, less swallowed and obscured (his favoured state) than horribly exposed <-- this is totally how alfredson's playing it

can't read how oldman's playing it ftb rubber guinness mask

"exchanged a knowing smile with Guillam" <-- cutting-edge sexuality alert

i like the way the film discarded some of le Carre's coyness about homosexuality but considering how underdrawn the suspects all were i'd question the screenwriters' priorities.

that screamingly 70s orange wallpaper

haha but er aren't those acoustic baffles? -- if he's in the office we see everyone arguing in throughout. (which itself is kind of a hint -- look at his triumph sitting by himself in a soundproofed room.)

look at his triumph sitting by himself in a soundproofed REALLY IMPORTANT BIG BOSS MAN room

i wanted the movie to be perfect too but sometimes you have to settle for good but flawed

ook at his triumph sitting by himself in a soundproofed REALLY IMPORTANT BIG MOLE MAN room <-- there is no dodging this

haha i think the film is very flawed: since i think its look is one of its -- and alfredson's -- strengths you should read with the grain first: wallpaper before "actors" so-called

tell you something tho, i am kind of psyched for them to go on and film The Honourable Schoolboy now assuming that a) the look will need to be totally different and b) Stephen Graham as Westerby will be about a million times more fun than Westerby as per the novel.

god except they'll move it from Hong Kong to Gdansk on a wet Tuesday afternoon or something.

ook at his triumph sitting by himself in a soundproofed REALLY IMPORTANT BIG MOLE MAN room <-- there is no dodging this

compromised it may be but that's cos it's the only room worth infiltrating <--- there is no dodging this

they should hire wong kar wai to film it

actually that is an awesome idea

not trying to talk myself out of how much i enjoyed TTSS btw but yes the art direction had to do an awful lot of the heavy lifting

xp

yet it's a fucking awesome idea

yet = yes

instead of taking off his guinness rubber-mask, oldman shd have donned a patrick stewart mask over the top

then get Woody Allen in for Smiley's People

otto leipzelig

the former ends after he's exchanged a knowing smile with Guillam on his triumphal march to the top table, if Oldman's playing ambivalence at the end there then he fluffs it imo

I wasn't suggesting Smiley found it a hollow victory - the irony, for me, was on the part of the director, who for the rest of the film hardly gives the impression that the only problem with the whole world they're in is that there's a mole.

yeah i mean i can see what you mean about the irony thing, but it was still out of step with the rest of the film. the whole feel of that last few mins wasn't really right for me, and if it was irony it was sort of oddly done.

It being a misstep, or a sop to commercial interests, are possibilities too. As is my misreading the rest of the film. But I prefer to have it all make sense my way!

the other bit in the last 10 mins that was shit was firth's "the west is decadent" or whatever he said. was like "ah let's give him a line to explain why he did it"...fucking scooby doo style.

that's from the book, and i suspect that by cutting back on the earlier presence of haydon as this amazing sardonic glamour-puss superspy that the entire circus adored admired and imitated they left themselves no way to open up the fact this his ideological "explanation" is meant to be seen as lame halting rubbish: the book's device has smiley only half-listening to the spew of cliche and not bothering to set most of it down on the page except as reported speech (viz the book's reading is that the mole likes being an actor with deadly secrets and the world at his fingertips; but the pretext behind it is just cobwebs and self-deluded empty blah: which is a shrewd IRL idea but needed way more work if they wanted it to read ironically, as opposed to just lamely)

yeah it was honestly not even a rant in the film, was just one single line. have to say i find colin firth pretty lightweight anyway but it wasn't his fault that bit was badly written.

prob sound harsh here but i loved the film, it looked great and the clothes and rooms and stuff were amazing, nice to see something really british too.

yeah like i said, underwritten characters all round imo. Le Carre is pretty good at establishing the suspects as, at least, separate personalities. Esterhase a lot less like Peter Lorre in the book.

s/b "a shrewd IRL idea that works in the book but needed way more work if the film wanted...": the book is kinda a detailed psychological exploration of the reality of a scoobydoo villain, and those round him -- which is odd but moving, actually

(not that JLC knows who the fuck scoobydoo is but i think a key to his success is basically treating quite trivial lightweight spy stuff as if it has enormous emotional-philosophical weight, like shakespeare rewriting the wacky races as a tragedy)

http://youtu.be/m6w0r-ScEG4

nice to see something really british too.

uh oh

what's that uh-oh for?

xposts

yeah le Carre manages to gloss over what we'd consider the heavyweight political and humanitarian stakes of the Cold War in favour of the emptiness and emotional damage it inflicts on a few players, and it's great. once again, the film isn't the book but attention to surface = less psychology = even less stakes, if anything.

Movie Smiley is kinda like the protagonist of The Third Policeman wandering around a murky, circular, mostly personal hell.

LG, just a dumb joke about your gray, declining isle and its cinema.

oh no DON'T

I found that explanation too Scooby-Doo at the time (seem to remember it being less so in the TV series). But afterwards, in my evident desire to rationalise this into the best film ever made or some such, I decided that its cursory nature was part of Alfredson's "look at these poor old fools carrying on in this bizarre foreign country of a past like what they're doing really matters" masterplan.

I think the world he used for the west was "ugly".