Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

"We should be fighting communists, not each other"

Any modern attempt to adapt John Le Carre's seminal spy novel comes laden with certain issues. Foremost amongst these is how to make it relevant to contemporary audiences... for most people the all-pervading fear of the commie is a joke of the past, and then there's the fact that any espionage thriller tends to be held up in comparison to whatever James Bond has been doing lately. So Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy could've very easily been a complete washout, but Tomas Alfredson wisely pushes it as far from James Bond territory as possible, and he makes the cold war stuff feel real. In this respect it's barely even a thriller in the way that modern audiences would see the term... instead it's a cerebral throwback to the espionage thrillers of the '70s, a cold war period piece that has more in common with The Ipcress File and The Conversation than it does with The Bourne Identity or Casino Royale. This is a film that requires the viewer to have all their wits about them, and it views the cold war almost as if it were a parallel universe.

George Smiley (Gary Oldman) is a retired spymaster called out of retirement to find the 'rotten apple' at the top of MI6. The film combines multiple timeframes and a Shakespeare play's worth of character actors to wheedle its way into an incredibly dense and complex whoddunit. There are lots of clandestine meetings in locker rooms and cafes, suspicious looks and accusations, and enough intrigue to keep Miss Marple busy for a year. These are the most powerful men that the world has never heard of, many of whom were loosely based on real-life operatives by author John Le Carres, and the way that they talk and deal with each other in a semi-childish manner seems incredibly bizarre at times. And this is in contrast against the taciturn Mr. Smiley, a man who plays his cards so close to the chest that it seems like he isn't playing at all. Smiley's effectiveness is down to his mild manner, he's cornered the market on being underestimated, and so he's pretty much the anti-James Bond in every way - a hero for the thinking man.

There are so many important characters in this complicated film that it threatened to completely overwhelm me a few times. They did the right thing in casting such a good range of recognisable faces, and Oldman is so fantastic as Smiley. He plays against type and gives a really restrained performance, affecting a cultivated oldboy inflection and doing things small. The attention to detail in this performance is magnetic, he draws you in and wraps you up in this great character. In an ideal world he'd win the Oscar for Best Actor, but I think it's a pretty safe bet that at least three of the other 2012 nominees are more likely to get it. Other standouts in the cast are Mark Strong, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hardy - they all make their characters stand out despite the fact that this isn't a story that dwells too much on performance or characterisation.

Director Tomas Alfredson came to this project after his chilling work with Let the Right One In, and his European sensibility lends the production a certain authenticity (perhaps because Europe is still a few decades behind the UK). There's an interesting subtext about the contrast between 'real' war (percieved as honourable) and the cold war (seen as a sneaky conflict after the A-bomb forced all the world's animosity to go underground). I feel a little unsure about putting my complete stamp of approval on the film, the script and novel are both rather dense and complex, so I don't think that just one viewing was enough for me to fully appreciate everything that was going on. I enjoyed Oldman playing the bespectacled librarian-avenger, but I can't completely say I grasped all the mechanics of the plot or even fully appreciated what Alfredson was doing as a director. It looks great and it feels great, but it's one to watch again methinks.

DIRECTOR: Tomas Alfredson
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan. Based on the novel by John Le Carre.
KEY ACTORS: Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ciaran Hinds, David Dencik, Simon McBurney, Kathy Burke, Stephen Graham

RELATED TEXTS
- Based on the novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carre. The character George Smiley also featured as the lead in the novels Call for the Dead, A Murder of Quality, Smiley's People and The Honourable Schoolboy.
- Smiley was also played on the screen to great acclaim by Alec Guinness in the TV films Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley's People.
- The character has also featured in the TV film A Murder of Quality (played by Denholm Elliott) and under a different name in the '60s film A Deadly Affair (played by James Mason).
- Other film adaptations of John Le Carre novels: The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, The Constant Gardner, The Little Drummer Girl, The Russia House, The Looking Glass War and The Tailor of Panama.
- Tomas Alfredson previously directed Let the Right One In, the success of which led to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. There is also some subject and tonal similarity to the German film The Lives of Others.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - nominated for Best Actor (Gary Oldman), Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Score.
BAFTAs - won Best Adapted Screenplay and Best British Film. Also nominated for Best Actor (Oldman), Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Original Music, Best Production Design and Best Sound.
Venice Film Festival - nominated for Golden Lion.