# 30
If you haven’t yet seen ‘Tinker, Tailor …’[1] it can only be because you’re waiting for me to give it the Bus Lane Seal of Approval. Consider it done… there, I’ve stamped it: “APPROVED” – just don’t ask me to summarise the plot for you. I was doing quite well, following the ins and outs, until Trigger[2] turned up to assist George Smiley with his enquiries. Seems that Trigger[3] was working for MI5 all along… maybe that medal they gave him wasn’t just for looking after his brush so diligently after all[4]. In a week when media nitwits are nattering about Strictly Come X Factor it was just such a pleasure and a relief to experience entertainment made with such intelligence. It is not the film of the book[5]; it stands apart, a piece of work in its own right. And so it should, with John le Carré listed as one of its Executive Producers. (You probably knew that le Carré is French for ‘the square’ – I confess, I didn’t).
If anything ‘Tinker, Tailor…’ is a film about looking. Smiley is both watchful and reticent. Nothing is ever perfectly clear, the focus keeps slipping. Everywhere there is mistrust and ambiguity. Early in the story, Smiley visits his optician and emerges with new spectacles – bi-focals with noticeably larger lenses. The colours are all muted, mainly shades of brown and grey and, because it’s the seventies, many scenes take place in a haze of cigarette smoke. The re-creation of time and place is perfect; from the ill-fitting, tweedy, three-piece suits to the self-adjusting suspension on Peter Guillam’s[6] Citroen DS. Scenes are often visited through windows, giving scope for reflections and the possibility of the watcher also being watched. At The Circus, people ascend and descend in a goods lift which displays a warning against losing one’s head. Within the maze of offices and archives, a ‘dumb-waiter’ ferries files mysteriously from floor to floor…but for whose benefit? Across the office, there is always someone listening on headphones. Are they listening to you, or to a phone-tap or to some previous conversation?
I didn’t notice a name-check in the credits for a ‘focus-puller’ so perhaps it’s either (or both) of the Editor (Dino Jonsäter) and the Cinematographer (Hoyte Van Hoytema) who was responsible for the masterly changes in focus within takes, enabling attention to switch from the foreground to the distance and back. This technique practically reaches orgasm in the airfield scene where Smiley stands on a runway and reduces Toby Esterhase[7] to tears while a twin-engine plane comes menacingly in to land behind them. I don’t know what the safety margins were when they filmed that, but I hope it wasn’t all done afterwards by Framestore.
Reviewers describe the movie as having ‘no moral certainty’, and they’re absolutely right. I don’t just mean Kathy Burke’s hilarious observation that the middle-aged inhabitants of The Circus were all seriously “under-fucked”. The wayward Ricki Tarr[8] is the perfect antithesis to the shallow certainty and one-dimensional idiocy of James Bond. Where 007 was all sophistication, sophistry and improbable violence, Ricki is scruffy, unlucky and real. When did we ever see James Bond call ‘M’ from a red telephone box with prostitutes’ calling cards on the window?
Smiley believes Karla is flawed by fanaticism, Karla knows that George is flawed by his love for the faithless Anne. And he’s still got the inscribed cigarette lighter to prove it. The look of speechless desolation on Percy Alleline’s[9] face after the traitor has been exposed (along with his treasured Project Witchcraft) has to be seen to be believed. And The Mole? Of course it was aarrggghh[10] all along. Think Kim Philby.
[1] ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’ Dir. Tomas Alfredson
[2] Yes, Trigger – the road sweeper from Only Fools & Horses.
[3] In ‘Tinker, Tailor..’ Roger Lloyd Pack plays Mendel, late of MI5.
[4] Google ‘Trigger’ – there’s a clip from the relevant episode on U-Tube
[5] Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré, 1974
[6] Benedict Cumberbatch
[7] David Dencik
[8] Tom Hardy
[9] Toby Jones
[10] Alright, it was Bill Haydon (Colin Firth) of course, Anne’s erstwhile lover to Smiley’s enduring distress.
No comments:
Post a Comment