Jan 11, 2012

"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" - 2011

The British had an empire once. Not that long ago. The Germans saw to its destruction and the Americans filled the void left by its collapse. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy takes place in the aftermath of that collapse, in a cold war London where the bureaucrats of MI6 yearn to be relevant once again. So blind are they in their pursuit of favor from their "American cousins" that they open themselves up to infiltration and manipulation by agents of the world's other post World War II superpower, the Soviet Union.

"The Circus", as it's called by its denizens, has a mole right near the top. MI6's enigmatic leader (known only as "Control") is on to his presence and in an attempt to discern his identity unwittingly sends an agent into a setup in Eastern Europe. Control's man is captured and believed killed and Control and his right hand man, George Smiley, are forced out in disgrace leaving the Circus with no defenders.

That is until a low level operative by the name of Ricky Tarr surfaces with a story to tell about a woman he met in Istanbul. Tarr's story catches the ear of high level politicians who want to know what the hell is going on at the Circus. In order to ascertain the veracity of Tarr's tall tale they reach out to the disgraced and initially unwilling Smiley and empower him to assemble a small covert team to dig for the truth. What Smiley discovers is Control's mole theory and the movie follows his efforts to expose said mole.

The film captures the ashen inertia of late 60s/early 70s London with grimy precision. It seems like nothing has received a fresh coat of paint since before the war. It's a former imperial capital shrouded in cigarette smoke and swaddled in musty woolen overcoats. Rarely has victory ever tasted so much like defeat. In this regard the filmmakers have succeeded brilliantly in creating a sense of place just as believable as that created by the BBC for the first filmed version of this story back in 1979 when most of the grime and inertia where still there to be filmed first hand.

That 1979 version, starring Alec Guinness as the taciturn but razor sharp George Smiley, spent 5 hours telling a tale that in this new version is compressed into 2 hours. And I'm afraid that this new film makes a pretty convincing argument that the original's length (or at least something close to it) was probably necessary to tell the tale properly. Why? Because this is not a tale of Jason Bourne hurtling himself through a digitally interconnected global village. This is a tale of paper files and personal contact, of the Dover to Calais ferry, soft rain showers, furtive glances and of pieces moved about the chessboard of superpower relations in moves that take years to develop and years more to uncover. The film certainly tries to give inertia its due in the performances, many of which are splendid. Where it drops the ball is in trying to make up for the time consumed by all those long looks and carefully choreographed, character-building interactions with editing that cuts such huge chunks out of the narrative that the story becomes almost incomprehensible after only 15 minutes. And this is a shame because the film sports one of the strongest casts in recent memory and I'm pretty sure that if the film were given an appropriate run time we'd be looking at Oscar nominations for several of the leads, most notably Gary Oldman, who gives Sir Alec a run for his money. We might even be looking at this as a serious candidate for Best Picture.

Hell, given the competition numerous Oscars might still be in the cards but it's far from a sure thing because unless you go into the movie with a fairly comprehensive knowledge of the story you'll probably emerge scratching your head; impressed but puzzled.

I'm not the kind of guy who sits around waiting for "the director's cut" or "special extended version" of this or that film to be released but in this case I'm going to make an exception.



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