Theaters would need only to pipe in cigarette smoke and the rattle of a failing Eastern Bloc HVAC system to make the experience immersive. . .
Portrayals of the profession of intelligence in popular culture matter because they influence the perceptions of the customers of intelligence, congressional overseers, and even new hires into the business. The performance and capabilities of intelligence officers are often measured against standards established by film directors and novelists, from Brian De Palma to Tom Clancy. Perhaps one of the most enduring renderings of the profession is John Le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which, since it was published in 1974, has been adapted to television, film, and two BBC radio series. The most recent addition to this collection is the Tomas Alfredson- directed film.
Coming from a veteran of British intelligence, Le Carré's fiction offers a counterpoint to the glamorous spy tales of Ian Fleming and others. In his books, espionage is a high-stakes game of bluffs and double-bluffs played by unsmiling men in sparsely appointed rooms. Here, Gary Oldman plays one of the most famous of those unsmiling men, frequent Le Carré protagonist George Smiley, a British- intelligence lifer who, as the film opens, has been forced into semi-retirement following the high-profile failure, and subsequent death, of his mentor (John Hurt). When it becomes apparent that a mole remains in place in a position of power back at "The Circus," Oldman doesn't get to enjoy his time off for long.
This review aims to address three questions concerning this addition: How does the movie differ from the novel and the 1979 BBC miniseries? (The BBC production is such a faithful rendering of the book that in this review the two will be regarded as essentially one version of the story.) Does the film realistically portray the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS)—or any other major Western intelligence agency? Finally, is the movie likely to alter or reinforce popular perceptions of intelligence in general?
Does the movie accurately depict the day-to-day life of the SIS? The upper tier of the SIS is reduced to six managers: their personalities and interactions have to stand for the accessible human factor of an obviously large and complex organisation. Strategic considerations and external politics are absent from their discussions. There are few hints about the size of SIS; at one point Smiley is told that the service has a total of 600 assets worldwide.
It stretches credulity that these six men manage worldwide operations but play operational roles in the running of the asset Merlin or the dissemination of the Witchcraft product. The analogue would be CIA's second tier—the directors of the National Clandestine Service, the Directorate of Science and Technology, and the Directorate of Intelligence—meeting an asset, servicing a safe house, and briefing the product downtown. This organisational compression works very well at moving the story along in print, but images of senior executives sneaking through the shadows themselves is a stretch for anyone who works in the federal bureaucracy, much less in the Intelligence Community. They know the prevalent—and, after all, logical—tendency to delegate assignments down through the strata of skills and expertise.
The movie's staging of the Circus offices is wonderfully effective: a claustrophobic world of crowded bullpens, ancient escalators, narrow corridors, and creaking dumbwaiters. It evoked for these greying reviewers their first experiences at CIA and NSA respectively, when paper files dominated the landscape. To exit the Circus, Smiley, and his boss, Control, weave their way through a maze of stairways, courtyards, and corridors. The editing of the film makes it seem like an hour's journey. It is consistent with Kim Philby's description of SIS Headquarters: "A dingy building, a warren of wooden partitions and frosted glass window, served by an ancient lift."
The final intellectual stretch readers and viewers are asked to perform in each of the versions is in accepting that a major counterintelligence (CI) investigation could be carried out without the involvement—or even the knowledge—of CI professionals. The Cabinet Office official, Oliver Lacon, turns aside Smiley's suggestion to turn the inquiry over to MI5: The Minister won't have that. You know perfectly well how he and Alleline feel about the competition. Rightly, too, if I may say so. A lot of ex-colonial administrators ploughing through Circus papers: you might as well bring in the Army to investigate the Navy.
Alfredson and screenwriters Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan compress Le Carré's labyrinthine plot, but don't simplify it. Its dealings and double-dealings will probably be better understood on a second viewing, but it only takes one to appreciate Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy as a film. After establishing an atmosphere of nearly unbearable dread, Alfredson keeps thickening and chilling it. There's less snow here than in the Swedish director's previous project, the coming-of-age vampire film Let The Right One In, but Tinker shares its pervasive coldness. Much of the action transpires against a backdrop of overcast skies, Gray institutional buildings, and anonymous apartment buildings, which look the same on either side of the Iron Curtain. There's a sly bit of commentary in that detail, as if the Cold War had drained the light and beauty from its super-powered antagonists' homelands. But the toll is just as evident in Oldman's face as he stares past those around him, analysing the information, planning his next move, thinking more than most, and feeling only what he still lets himself feel.
Portrayals of the profession of intelligence in popular culture matter because they influence the perceptions of the customers of intelligence, congressional overseers, and even new hires into the business. The performance and capabilities of intelligence officers are often measured against standards established by film directors and novelists, from Brian De Palma to Tom Clancy. Perhaps one of the most enduring renderings of the profession is John Le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which, since it was published in 1974, has been adapted to television, film, and two BBC radio series. The most recent addition to this collection is the Tomas Alfredson- directed film.
Coming from a veteran of British intelligence, Le Carré's fiction offers a counterpoint to the glamorous spy tales of Ian Fleming and others. In his books, espionage is a high-stakes game of bluffs and double-bluffs played by unsmiling men in sparsely appointed rooms. Here, Gary Oldman plays one of the most famous of those unsmiling men, frequent Le Carré protagonist George Smiley, a British- intelligence lifer who, as the film opens, has been forced into semi-retirement following the high-profile failure, and subsequent death, of his mentor (John Hurt). When it becomes apparent that a mole remains in place in a position of power back at "The Circus," Oldman doesn't get to enjoy his time off for long.
This review aims to address three questions concerning this addition: How does the movie differ from the novel and the 1979 BBC miniseries? (The BBC production is such a faithful rendering of the book that in this review the two will be regarded as essentially one version of the story.) Does the film realistically portray the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS)—or any other major Western intelligence agency? Finally, is the movie likely to alter or reinforce popular perceptions of intelligence in general?
Does the movie accurately depict the day-to-day life of the SIS? The upper tier of the SIS is reduced to six managers: their personalities and interactions have to stand for the accessible human factor of an obviously large and complex organisation. Strategic considerations and external politics are absent from their discussions. There are few hints about the size of SIS; at one point Smiley is told that the service has a total of 600 assets worldwide.
It stretches credulity that these six men manage worldwide operations but play operational roles in the running of the asset Merlin or the dissemination of the Witchcraft product. The analogue would be CIA's second tier—the directors of the National Clandestine Service, the Directorate of Science and Technology, and the Directorate of Intelligence—meeting an asset, servicing a safe house, and briefing the product downtown. This organisational compression works very well at moving the story along in print, but images of senior executives sneaking through the shadows themselves is a stretch for anyone who works in the federal bureaucracy, much less in the Intelligence Community. They know the prevalent—and, after all, logical—tendency to delegate assignments down through the strata of skills and expertise.
The movie's staging of the Circus offices is wonderfully effective: a claustrophobic world of crowded bullpens, ancient escalators, narrow corridors, and creaking dumbwaiters. It evoked for these greying reviewers their first experiences at CIA and NSA respectively, when paper files dominated the landscape. To exit the Circus, Smiley, and his boss, Control, weave their way through a maze of stairways, courtyards, and corridors. The editing of the film makes it seem like an hour's journey. It is consistent with Kim Philby's description of SIS Headquarters: "A dingy building, a warren of wooden partitions and frosted glass window, served by an ancient lift."
The final intellectual stretch readers and viewers are asked to perform in each of the versions is in accepting that a major counterintelligence (CI) investigation could be carried out without the involvement—or even the knowledge—of CI professionals. The Cabinet Office official, Oliver Lacon, turns aside Smiley's suggestion to turn the inquiry over to MI5: The Minister won't have that. You know perfectly well how he and Alleline feel about the competition. Rightly, too, if I may say so. A lot of ex-colonial administrators ploughing through Circus papers: you might as well bring in the Army to investigate the Navy.
Alfredson and screenwriters Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan compress Le Carré's labyrinthine plot, but don't simplify it. Its dealings and double-dealings will probably be better understood on a second viewing, but it only takes one to appreciate Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy as a film. After establishing an atmosphere of nearly unbearable dread, Alfredson keeps thickening and chilling it. There's less snow here than in the Swedish director's previous project, the coming-of-age vampire film Let The Right One In, but Tinker shares its pervasive coldness. Much of the action transpires against a backdrop of overcast skies, Gray institutional buildings, and anonymous apartment buildings, which look the same on either side of the Iron Curtain. There's a sly bit of commentary in that detail, as if the Cold War had drained the light and beauty from its super-powered antagonists' homelands. But the toll is just as evident in Oldman's face as he stares past those around him, analysing the information, planning his next move, thinking more than most, and feeling only what he still lets himself feel.