Under chilly gray skies at the height of the Cold War, an
assignment goes wrong. A British agent (Mark Strong) is shot down outside a
café in Budapest and the head of MI6 (John Hurt) is forced out in the ensuing
blowback. At his last meeting before his forced retirement, the old man
declares that he’s taking Smiley with him. That would be George Smiley (Gary
Oldman), a deputy head of the intelligence service. He’s the graying,
bespectacled gentleman on the back half of middle-aged who registers the news
with the slightest turn of his head. What is he thinking? That’s the question
that resonates throughout Tinker Tailor
Solider Spy as Smiley, after being forced out of his job, is secretly
approached to head up an investigation into some devastating information. It
turns out that one of his former colleagues, indeed one amongst the select
group of men who are in charge of the whole Circus (a codename for MI6
headquarters), is a Soviet mole.
Smiley accepts his assignment with the same impenetrable
gaze, the stiff upper lip and quiet resignation to duty, as he did the news of
his forced retirement. That tilt of the head in his first scene speaks volumes.
Not only does it set up a character who draws you in through his apparent
frailty and quiet dominance expressed through his deliberate, considered
actions, it sets up a film in which small decisions, slight movements, quiet
moments, speak loudly and dramatically. This is one of the best directed –
tightly controlled without ever being heavy-handed – films of the year. Swede
Tomas Alfredson, whose modern vampire film Let
the Right One In is a masterpiece of restraint and visual imagination,
makes Tinker Tailor a vital and exquisitely
composed thriller of great patience about a vampiric profession. It portrays
the spy game as a drab office job with life and death stakes that slowly drains
the passion out of people.
One spy, played with a sapped vitality by Tom Hardy, returns
from a botched mission behind enemy lines during which he had an affair with a
beautiful Russian woman (Svetlana Khodchenkova). In flashback we see the
reluctant rush of warm romance that overtakes them. In the present, Hardy’s
cold eyes sell the impact of the aftermath. This man has been ground under by
the job, by the violence he’s seen and the moral confusion he’s had to endure.
Compare that to the wiry energy of a young spy who works a desk, as played by
the delightful Benedict Cumberbatch. He’s secretly helping Smiley and, though
he doesn’t go into the field, his analog research through pages and volumes,
smuggling files out of a secured library, has its dangers. As he becomes more
aware of the danger the unknown mole could pose to him, the constant
surveillance he may be opening himself up to, he realizes that he’s forced to
play the spy game even in his own office amongst supposed allies. The main
difference between the English and the Soviet spies here are only the teams
they’re playing for. Political ideology goes unmentioned. The game itself stays
constant. It’s a tightly restrained game that favors the cold and devious and
will demand your participation even if you weren’t expecting to play.
That’s what makes Oldman’s masterfully understated,
occasionally downright catatonic, central performance so effective. In his
silence and patience, his interrogative calm, you can see gears of
investigative thinking turning behind his eyes. His large glasses form a
protective dome that allows him to represent himself as weaker than he really is.
His calm demeanor cloaks a complex interiority. On the rare occasions he raises
his voice the impact of the shift in volume is startling. When, in a flashback,
he spies a hurtful personal revelation about his marriage, the emotion breaks
through his face with such shattering swiftness that it’s clear that this is a
man who uses restraint and calm to mask deep personal feelings. He never speaks
about this revelation, just as he never needs to sit and explain his thought
process in his ongoing clandestine investigation into the identity of the
Soviet mole. Each of the suspects (David Dencik, Colin Firth, Ciarán Hinds and
Toby Jones) has potentially damning evidence to be considered. But to whom does
all this evidence point? Without talking us through his thought process, Oldman
makes it all so quietly clear.
This is a top-notch mystery, a pleasurable espionage puzzle.
Screenwriters Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan had their work cut out for
them, condensing the original John le Carré novel, which already filled a 1979
miniseries with Alec Guinness, into a little over two hours. I’ve yet to
encounter the story through either of those earlier tellings, but the filmgoing
experience was exceptionally satisfying. It’s complex and understated, yes, but
I didn’t find it confusing or overwhelming at all. Alfredson uses the lean and
dense screenplay to layer in flashbacks, including to an increasingly poignant
office Christmas party, to lay out all the pieces of the puzzle then allows
them to snap into place with a satisfying thrill.
Without sacrificing clarity, Alfredson draws the story in
such artful, economical strokes. His tremendously meticulous filmmaking
displays remarkable visual clarity and tightly honed soundscapes.
Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema creates images that are striking and chilling
with a deceptive complexity lurking behind their simplicity, much like the
situations they dramatize. At one point, Hardy looks across the street at his
Soviet target, the man’s apartment splayed out across the way in a Rear Window style. Here is a film in
which the characters, no matter how secretive they try to be, are living their
lives, running their schemes, to some degree on display for those trying to surveil them. The man who will
ultimately triumph is the one who manages to reveal the least as he outsmarts
the rest. I’d bet on Smiley.
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