Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – Curzon Richmond

This review contains spoilers. Please do not read on if you are not familiar with the story and intend to see the film.

I had not been quite this excited about seeing a film in quite some time. There are remarkably few occasions on which a work of art has been assembled in such exemplary fashion: a cast that is beyond stellar, a director (Tomas Alfredson) who is beyond fashionable, and a story from a series that is arguably beyond rival in its genre, both in purely literary terms and in terms of historical realism and accuracy.

Perhaps the last film to assemble such a roster of talent was The King’s Speech, a work of extraordinary quality, but not a truly great film. The characters and the story are too far removed both from the true course of history and from our present mores. By contrast, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy has always been a great story because – unlike its estranged cousins, the Bond novels – the characters at its heart are just like us. They just happen to be spies. They are not separated by a veneer of glamour. Nor is the world they inhabit Manichean in quality. It is a messy, violent, immoral, broken world without many rules beyond loyalty – the most valuable and most fickle of all qualities.

Gary Oldman is finally given the chance to take the plaudits as the inimitable George Smiley. He is an actor’s actor, a classic support man, who has never received an Oscar nomination. In Tinker he gives, perhaps, his definitive performance, one that will surely earn him the recognition he has so long deserved. This is doubly impressive given the history of the role: many will forever associate it with Alec Guinness. Oldman’s Smiley is altogether colder, less cuddly; yet somehow also more damaged and more human. He is less amused by those around him, but perhaps more influenced by them. It is a performance of great skill.

The rest of the cast does its job. Particularly good is Benedict Cumberbatch as Peter Guillam, Smiley’s young protégé and confidante. He brings out the vulnerability of the character, but there is also a surprising steeliness that reveals itself in what is arguably the film’s best scene, when his theft of secret documents from the Circus is held up by Alleline and friends. He also gets the film’s best reveal, looming ominously behind Toby Esterhase as the lift doors slide slowly open.

The film is fatally flawed, but not in the manner you would expect. Everything about it is well done. But ultimately the medium is inappropriate for the material. There are too many twists and turns for a two-hour show, a problem made more difficult by Alfredson’s decision to begin slowly and then ratchet up the pace. This is not untypical for spy thrillers, but it doesn’t work in this instance: the finale feels rushed and, worse, untidy. It does le Carre’s source material a disservice by failing to connect the dots.

For that reason, and that alone, this is not a great film. It is a very, very good one – impeccable, you could say. As an introduction to Smiley and the world of the Circus, it is invaluable. I hope that it will direct people back to the BBC’s seminal TV series of 1979, and perhaps even further, to the original novels.