It is pretty much stripped down to the main plot points of a single strand.
Cheers for that. Really interesting stuff. It didn’t occur to me for a second that those would be CGI, which is pretty much how it should be.
(watching–don’t ask) I figured he could do it, but Oldman has my permission to be George Smiley. Good lord, he’s even more invisible than Guinness (Smiley being the Anti-Bond).
ETA: In his Old Man makeup I have to remind myself he’s younger than I.
Is that Roundhay Garden?
ETA: With American shows I check if that’s an elevator I designed. The most obvious one was for “Second Edition,” where I took the call and dragged the panel out of the trash.
Make that “Early Edition.”
Since I had MLK Day off, I finally went to see TTSS. Atmospheric, intelligent–& probably worth more than one viewing. I read a bunch of le Carré’s books back in the day & may have seen the miniseries; not sure, though. I was able to follow the plot pretty well…
Le Carré had a cameo in the film & seems to approve of it. From his website:
They just announced the Bafta shortlist:
I thought it was awful, a total waste of time. I had to keep leaning over and asking my husband why something had happened, and half the time he didn’t know, either. Once, it turned out I had actually fallen asleep and missed a bit of a scene. I have only ever fallen asleep at the movies once before, and it was after not having slept the previous night. It’s a very long seeming movie with very little to make you care about what was happening. I thought the camera seemingly glazed by the constant cigarrette smoke was an interesting touch, but it just made it drearier. Worst movie I’ve seen in a very long time.
I saw it this past weekend and was also very lost during several parts of the film. I knew nothing about it going in other than it was about spies. I kept feeling like I was missing something important. One of the biggest bits of confusion was with Prideaux being shot and then showing up at that school. I thought he had been killed so that whole time I thought those were flashbacks! So if he was just shot, why was that mission such an embarrassing failure that Control & Smiley had to be pushed out?
I also found it very difficult to keep all the names straight. Which one was Alleline? Was he one of the four suspected spies? It was like they’d refer to a character for half the movie by his first name, and then suddenly switch to his last. When they were torturing Prideaux and asking him about Alleline, I had no idea who they were talking about! And other than at the cafe, do we ever see Karla? (I actually thought Karla was a woman when we first saw the name on the chess piece.)
He was shot in public. The story got into the newspapers and became a public scandal that had to be dealt with somehow. Prideaux was captured and interrogated, resulting in the identification and death of numerous British agents.
Percy Alleline was the short, gnomish-looking guy who took over the Circus after Control was pushed out. He was one of the four suspected moles (“Tinker”).
I think the only time we see Karla is in the flashback scene set in Delhi in which George Smiley tries to persuade him to defect. He wasn’t at the cafe. We never see his face.
Wow, de gustibus and all that but this is way over the top. What were you expecting to see? Didn’t the fact was based on one of the best-known works by John le Carre tip you off that there’d be a lot of subtle intrigue and a distinct lack of explosions and exposition? If Tinker is the worst movie you’ve seen in a long time you must be either living in a glorious alternate reality with truly incredible movies or have tastes that are the polar opposite to mine.
For my money it was a better adaptation than I dared hope for. The cast were brilliant and the evocation of a drab, claustrophobic secret service, lost in a wilderness of mirrors was superbly done. I think two of the minor characters summed it up well, Connie with her nostalgia for the good old days of World War II (where the spies had the consolation of clear goals) and Ricki Tarr’s comment about “wanting a normal life, you know not like you lot.” Hell I even loved the montage at the end, despite not being a fan of either musical montages or La Mer.
One (very) minor quibble though. What was up with the random shots of Smiley swimming in his glasses?
Oh and just to add to Ascenray’s explanation of Prideaux’s mission. He’s not just any old agent - the guy’s been there since the War so he’s a near 30 year veteran, almost part of the inner circle. By capturing Prideaux Karla’s managed to gain access to pretty much everything the Circus has done in the last 30 years. Control has to take the fall, he sent Prideaux out on his own initiative (he couldn’t let the others in on it, the whole point was for the fake defector to identify the mole). Prideaux’s death would have been a seriously embarrasing diplomatic incident, his capture is an intelligence disaster of epic proportions.
It was a diplomatic disaster as well as a great humiliation for MI6 because ‘they’ - or rather Control - walked into Karla’s trap. But the diplomatic angle shouldn’t be underestimated.
To be far, Control had suspicions but he had to gamble - with Prideaux’s life. It was obv. also a great coup for Karla to bag someone so senior.
Just my WAG, but I assumed it was to show Smiley (and the other senior people) carrying on with a daily routine they had been doing for years*; one piece of tradition that had yet to fall by the wayside.
- thirty years prior presumably as vigorous fit young(er) men and now as paunchy, frail seniors.
I thought the musical montage was the high point of an excellent movie, revealing several plot points and tying them together. I thought it a better montage than the Christening/assassinations in Godfather I.
Dear God, are Oldman, Hurt, and Firth really that damned good? They are mesmerizing.
Yeah, that sounds plausible, but why does he keep his glasses on?
Because he wants to be able to see? That’s why I keep my glasses on while swimming, so long as my head isn’t under water.
There was a lot of attention paid to the big spectacles. I just borrowed my friend’s DVDs of the TV dhow and I notice that Alec Guinness also has a lot of business with the glasses. I haven’t read the novel, so I don’t know if that was emphasized in the books.
Fair enough I suppose, and that pond did look pretty murky to me. ALthough as another glasses wearer I must say I take mine off when swimming as a rule.
It’s been a long time since I read the book, but I dimly recalled Smiley’s glasses being mentioned quite a bit. He had a habit of cleaning them with his tie.
Why’d you go see it in the first place? It’s obviously not your kind of movie.
There’s one of your problems, you’re one of those people who can’t pay attention and you have to talk during the movie which makes you miss even more. The half your husband missed must have been those times you were talking to him and diverting his attention.
Falling asleep at a movie never, EVER is a reflection on the movie, it’s a reflection on the person falling asleep.
I cared because it was all so fascinating to me. I really want to see it again.
Is there a more meaningless phrase in the English language? Especially when it’s said about a great movie like this. You just know that someone, somewhere has called Citizen Kane, and The Godfather, and Raging Bull, and The Wizard of Oz, and Casablanca, and Chinatown, and Metropolis “the worst” movies they’ve ever seen. Like falling asleep, it only reflects on the person who says it, not on the movie itself.
Are you dropping non sequiturs outside the Pit now too?