Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Directed by Tomas Alfredson
George Smiley, the aging master spy of the Cold War and once heir apparent to Control, is brought back out of retirement to flush out a top level mole within the Circus. Smiley must travel back through his life and murky workings of the Circus to unravel the net spun by his nemesis Karla 'The Sandman' of the KGB and reveal the identity of the mole before he disappears.
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What critics say influenced Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Shots framed through window panes and sets lit through a constant hazy mist emphasize the spy theme; some shots, like Ricki Tarr’s spying on a bedroom scene in the building across the street, have a Rear Window feel.
Fans of The Ipcress File and le Carré's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, rejoice.
It was a stroke of genius to hire the Swedish Alfredson to direct this oh-so-English material, not only for the sideways-angle European sensibility he brings to the table, but also for the flair for suspense, off-center framing and gloomy sympathy for outsiders he demonstrated in the pre-teen-vampire story “ Let the Right One In .”
But for director Tomas Alfredson, this is a period piece, and as he did in Let the Right One In, he re-creates the '70s without nostalgia but with all its pervasive ennui and disillusionment.
Tomas Alfredson, who directed the haunting and austere Swedish vampire film "Let the Right One In," uses voice-overs to clarify the link between complex and often hard-to-comprehend actions and events, to mixed success.
All of this is superbly atmospheric in the hands of director Tomas Alfredson, who made the sober and effective vampire movie " Let the Right One In ."
For his part, director Tomas Alfredson, whose previous film was the extraordinary Swedish vampiric coming-of-age tale "Let the Right One In," finds an intriguing approach to the material that presents everything in a slightly askew manner that adds a certain degree of tension to the proceedings--instead of the lush visuals that one normally associates with the spy genre, he and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema give the film a grey, gloomy look that will remind viewers more of the opening factory scenes in "Joe vs. the Volcano" than anything else.
Not that it was an easy task for writers Peter Straughan and Bridget O’Connor and director Tomas Alfredson (“Let the Right One In”) to boil down John Le Carre’s novel (which became a popular miniseries), which is extremely well regarded for its density.
Seeing spies letting down their hair has a streak of absurdity about it that recalls helmer Alfredson’s roots in comedy, evident in the breakthrough feature he made with troupe Killingganget, “Four Shades of Brown,” whose title might be a suitable description of the palette of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.”
Trench-coat trudging, briefcase-carrying Gary Oldman, as John le Carre's Cold War-era British agent George Smiley, looks like he's on his way to the "Death of a Salesman" auditions.
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There have been some, such as "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold," "The Tailor of Panama" and "The Constant Gardener," that have done a reasonably good job of transposing the material into cinematic terms without losing too much of the material in the process while others, including the largely forgotten likes of "The Deadly Affair," "The Looking Glass War" and the dreadful "The Little Drummer Girl," that made such utter hash of his words that even those who had actually read the stories had virtually no idea what was going on at any given time.
At the same time, with Swedish director Tomas Alfredson at the helm of his first English language film, one might be pardoned for hoping for a bit of the spookiness of his Let the Right One In or the political passion of le Carré’s The Constant Gardener.
After all, how could the guy who played Sid Vicious, Lee Harvey Oswald, Dracula, the looney villains in "Leon" and "The Fifth Element" and whatever the hell he was supposed to be in "Red Riding Hood" possibly pull off the part of George Smiley, a man who is pretty much defined by his quiet restraint?
There have been some, such as "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold," "The Tailor of Panama" and "The Constant Gardener," that have done a reasonably good job of transposing the material into cinematic terms without losing too much of the material in the process while others, including the largely forgotten likes of "The Deadly Affair," "The Looking Glass War" and the dreadful "The Little Drummer Girl," that made such utter hash of his words that even those who had actually read the stories had virtually no idea what was going on at any given time.
There might not be any 20th Century novelist as well-served by dramatic adaptations of his works as British spy author (and former British spy) John le Carré: the not-as-great films taken from his body of work feature such wholly enjoyable thinking-heavy thrillers as The Russia House and The Tailor of Panama , while the great ones include the rather terrific '60s film The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and the outstanding 1979 BBC miniseries Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy , one of the finest things aired on television in that decade.
Fans of The Ipcress File and le Carré's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, rejoice.
The following year, Smiley slipped into “The Spy Who Came In from the Cold,” which remains le Carré’s most celebrated work, partly because it scraped every lingering speck of James Bond from our understanding of what spying might entail.
And Strong, who has appeared in films from "Syriana" (2005) to "Sherlock Holmes" (2009), is quite compelling as Prideaux.
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There might not be any 20th Century novelist as well-served by dramatic adaptations of his works as British spy author (and former British spy) John le Carré: the not-as-great films taken from his body of work feature such wholly enjoyable thinking-heavy thrillers as The Russia House and The Tailor of Panama , while the great ones include the rather terrific '60s film The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and the outstanding 1979 BBC miniseries Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy , one of the finest things aired on television in that decade.
Alfredson, on the other hand, closes with “La Mer,” which I last heard sung at the end of “Finding Nemo.”