I don’t think anybody needs to bother trying to catch what exactly is going on in Tomas Alfredson’s superb adaptation of John Le Carre’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy [2011]. The plot is labyrinthine, and all we really need to know is that Smiley, the top spy played by the understated Gary Oldman, has just been recruited from “retirement” by British Intelligence to root out the Russian mole that has infiltrated its highest echelons. It’s enough that we bask in the sweet paranoia of its Cold War atmosphere, helped for the most part by the attention to detail displayed by production designer Maria Djurkovic. She goes to town with her evocation of that world. Not much action actually happens in this odd testosterone fest: it’s mostly a movie where middle-aged men talk to each other, and sometimes threaten each other — and yet what we get is a concentrated whirlwind of tension that seems to break every half-second as Smiley gets closer and closer to the truth. Mostly, it’s a sad movie about fear and spy politics and the deadly compromises made by so-called friends in the name of a war that cannot be understood. I barely comprehended any of it, which required a repeat viewing the moment it came to the end. I did just that, and suddenly I got nuances I missed the first time around. What I got for the most part though is a muscular enjoyment I did not expect, and a willingness to do another round with it. Who would have thought? This is a smart, sad spy movie. 
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I don’t think anybody needs to bother trying to catch what exactly is going on in Tomas Alfredson’s superb adaptation of John Le Carre’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy [2011]. The plot is labyrinthine, and all we really need to know is that Smiley, the top spy played by the understated Gary Oldman, has just been recruited from “retirement” by British Intelligence to root out the Russian mole that has infiltrated its highest echelons. It’s enough that we bask in the sweet paranoia of its Cold War atmosphere, helped for the most part by the attention to detail displayed by production designer Maria Djurkovic. She goes to town with her evocation of that world. Not much action actually happens in this odd testosterone fest: it’s mostly a movie where middle-aged men talk to each other, and sometimes threaten each other — and yet what we get is a concentrated whirlwind of tension that seems to break every half-second as Smiley gets closer and closer to the truth. Mostly, it’s a sad movie about fear and spy politics and the deadly compromises made by so-called friends in the name of a war that cannot be understood. I barely comprehended any of it, which required a repeat viewing the moment it came to the end. I did just that, and suddenly I got nuances I missed the first time around. What I got for the most part though is a muscular enjoyment I did not expect, and a willingness to do another round with it. Who would have thought? This is a smart, sad spy movie. 

2 Notes/ Hide

  1. geeksturr said: love this movie!
  2. sandwichspy posted this