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

yeah I only picked that up on viewing 2.

It took a couple seconds to realize what had happened; wouldn't call it mansex though.

the bit where Guillam dumps his lover seems pretty clear? and it's a departure from the novel, so it's not like i was pre-warned

when Haydon/Firth sez "there's a boy as well" near the end it didn't even get through

are you talking about haydon and prideaux? thats pretty vague in the novel

I would think that that look they exchanged at the Christmas party conveyed enough about their relationship.

iirc the only hints in the novel are a few dropped asides about how BH and JP were "thick as thieves" or whatever

le Carre is coy about homosexuality in the novel, considering what we know about the real life prototypes of the characters. but at the same time that public school blurring between deep friendship and admiration and sexual love seems like a true and useful ambiguity

haydon's bisexuality is made explicit, so i think youre definitely supposed to wonder if the two were lovers

i know what you mean nv about the "smartboy film" thing, but i think TTSS managed to be both ambiguous as well as having a tightly wound plot that does merit a bit of thought afterwards. it felt a bit like you end up assuming some of it rather than being beaten over the head with it.

some of the shifts are a little more elliptical than others. the setup of the final exposure/confrontation was pretty opaque to me. and i didn't get smiley's arrival at the boys' school -- tho i guess that information is gleaned from the files stolen by guillam.

i think the film leaves you to fill in the gaps, but also accept that some of the gaps are intended as unknowables, in the same way that the spy's world contains unknowables. i suppose it's not elliptical plots that bother me so much as circular earnest arguments about the "correct" solution.

the setup of the final exposure in the novel still feels a bit opaque to me and i re-read the fucker 3 or 4 times.

yeah i hate that kind of shit. i'm kind of anti-nolan solely because of it tbh

xp

yeah one of my big bugbears with Nolan is i think he invites that shit deliberately

donnie darko is the pinnacle of that shit.

yeah i have seen the miniseries and read the book twice each and just saw the movie i still dont really remember how the final trap works

i thought memento was a really unsatisfying exercise. i enjoyed inception somewhat but my first thought as the credits rolled was "i don't want to read a single thing about this shit on the internet"

anyway, no nolan in the lecarre room

smiley showing up at the boys school though--prideaux is still using his old "ellis" work identity. cant be hard to track it down.

the movie's explication is slightly clearer than the novel's i think. Smiley figures that the Russian cultural attache guy is the mole's handler and therefore by making the Russians think they've smoked out the mole they panic them into warning him - so the guy who turns up off-schedule to meet him must be the mole.

xp

yeah and iirc in the novel at least Smiley's aware that Prideaux isn't dead?

yeah in the novel prideaux comes back while smiley is still in the circus i think. the time frame in the movie is a bit confusing to me--seems to compress the novel into a much shorter span

novel version takes place maybe 6 months after Prideaux's capture? film version is much more ambiguous

having irina shot in front of prideaux confuses it for me. i thought prideaux had been released by the time ricky goes to portugal in the book, but i might be misremembering

anyway, and i probably said this after i watched it, but one of the most attractive aspects of the movie for me is that i didn't feel compelled to think the details thru. the dreamlike ambience was mostly great on its own, even more deliberately low-key than the novel. there are a couple of silly set-pieces that let that mood down i think. until i watch it again i'm gonna not think very highly of the "threatening to put Esterhase on the plane" scene

and the "Irina gets shot" scene was another bum note i think

the "threatening to put Esterhase on the plane" scene

i didn't really get what the threat was here. they were just gonna hand him over to the soviets? or put him in a place where he would probably get killed? or just demote him?

drop him back in Eastern Europe to get picked up by the enemy, yeah

i also feel like i missed some details about his backstory. was he hungarian, and a defector to begin with?

i think he's Hungarian and is "found" by Smiley in Vienna at the end of WWII but i don't think there's a suggestion that he's a defector as such. an emigre tho.

found by control i think. Smiley gets super mad at him for being a traitor (in the context of circus power struggle), right?

some of the details of his portrayal in the movie were much closer to the book than the miniseries' was -- flamboyant dresser, unplaceable accent

Speaks 14 languages, all of them awkwardly.

he's a bit Peter Lorre in the movie maybe but in a film of underdrawn characters that's ok. yeah really Smiley thinks of all of the suspects as betrayers of one kind or another.

ciaran hinds was a bit wasted. bland is an interesting character in the book, too.

i think it's probably a deliberate decision to have the characters so flat in the film but it's another thing that makes me question the screenplay a bit

On reflection, watching this film on a plane while sitting behind 2 screaming toddlers wasn't a great move in terms of following the finer plot points.

would have been nice to have bland et al fleshed out but tbf the decision to flesh out the central narrative at the expense of those touches probably needed making for a movie version

What's Bland's character in the book? I recall him as being the most underdrawn, as if the name was a hint. If it had been him as the mole I would have felt cheated.

I can only really remember him in one scene though, which is Guillam's trip into the Circus to steal the documents.

agree with ronan that this was not a difficult movie to follow, as long as you weren't looking sideways at it for the nolanswipe

in the book there's a pub lunch scene filling out his background a bit more, iirc- tho yeah he's less involved in the real-time plot than the others

bland is the working-class professor who uses his left-wing credentials as a way to recruit students in the eastern bloc

I'm starting to wonder which of you nerdz is the mole.

we all done it, guvnor

nah tho, for all it's fun to nerd out on the details i still think this is mostly a pretty meditation on emptiness and isolation and the horror of office jobs

ilx?

Man, the betrayal goes all the way to Smiley's conjugal bed

LOL, goole

i think goole may be onto something