I have to admit to being a bit of a sucker when it comes to spy films. Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (1939), Notorious (1946) and North By Northwest (1959) as well as The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (Martin Ritt, 1963) were some of the first films I saw and still stand as some of my favorites. However, more recently the BBC Television series Spooks has surpassed any spy film I've ever seen and set a level of sophistication that I expected when I went to view Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy (Tomas Alfredson, 2011) at the Rivoli Cinema this morning.
I've never read a novel by John le Carré so wasn't, like many in the audience, comparing the film to the book, but realized that in its adaptation to the screen, slices of information about the myriad of characters who surrounded the central MI5 agents needed to be supplied as background information in the early part of the film. Unfortunately this meant that viewers were offered fragmented vignettes that eventually made sense once the film progressed.
This was a quiet and measured production that revealed, as many spy dramas do, the complexities of espionage, the politics and personalities. I personally didn't find it either intriguing or exciting, but enjoyed the bleak aesthetic of the film achieved by an emphasis on rather dull architecture, punctuated briefly by scenes that included decorative ironwork staircases.
I did find Garry Oldman's acting superb as George Smiley, Control's right hand man and John Hurt, just brilliant as Control.
In this film dominated by old men of British Intelligence; men who decided who should live and who should die within and without their own ranks, I enjoyed one particular frame, which showed a piece of graffiti written across a wall outside the secret house. It read: The Future is Female. Unlike Ros Myers (Hermione Norris) who is a formidable spy in Spooks, the few women in this film are allotted stereotypical roles of keeper of the house where the spies meet, a love interest who has vital information to share and a teacher who used to work for the circus and reminisces over photographs of 'her boys' - the old MI5 guys when they were young.
For me at least there were several scenes that made the film more interesting. In one, a bee is trapped inside the car in which the operatives are traveling and in another, an owl, which has been trapped inside a lit fireplace, screeches headlong into the class room, but is callously bludgeoned to death by the male teacher in front of the children. Another scene, which puts a human touch on this otherwise cold and callous film shows Smiley unwrap a mint whilst waiting, gun in hand for the mole.
If you love le Carré novels then you are probably going to love this film, but if you love Spooks, or films that are high powered then you may be a little disappointed.
I've never read a novel by John le Carré so wasn't, like many in the audience, comparing the film to the book, but realized that in its adaptation to the screen, slices of information about the myriad of characters who surrounded the central MI5 agents needed to be supplied as background information in the early part of the film. Unfortunately this meant that viewers were offered fragmented vignettes that eventually made sense once the film progressed.
This was a quiet and measured production that revealed, as many spy dramas do, the complexities of espionage, the politics and personalities. I personally didn't find it either intriguing or exciting, but enjoyed the bleak aesthetic of the film achieved by an emphasis on rather dull architecture, punctuated briefly by scenes that included decorative ironwork staircases.
I did find Garry Oldman's acting superb as George Smiley, Control's right hand man and John Hurt, just brilliant as Control.
In this film dominated by old men of British Intelligence; men who decided who should live and who should die within and without their own ranks, I enjoyed one particular frame, which showed a piece of graffiti written across a wall outside the secret house. It read: The Future is Female. Unlike Ros Myers (Hermione Norris) who is a formidable spy in Spooks, the few women in this film are allotted stereotypical roles of keeper of the house where the spies meet, a love interest who has vital information to share and a teacher who used to work for the circus and reminisces over photographs of 'her boys' - the old MI5 guys when they were young.
For me at least there were several scenes that made the film more interesting. In one, a bee is trapped inside the car in which the operatives are traveling and in another, an owl, which has been trapped inside a lit fireplace, screeches headlong into the class room, but is callously bludgeoned to death by the male teacher in front of the children. Another scene, which puts a human touch on this otherwise cold and callous film shows Smiley unwrap a mint whilst waiting, gun in hand for the mole.
If you love le Carré novels then you are probably going to love this film, but if you love Spooks, or films that are high powered then you may be a little disappointed.
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