Spies,
Inc.
After
the international success of Lat den ratte komme in (Let the
Right One In, 2008), Swedish filmmaker Tomas Alfredson decided the
next step in his career was to put aside vampires in exchange for
spies.
And
damned if he wasn't right. The twilight realm of vampires isn't quite
as eerie as the half-lit realm of international espionage; the undead
figures lurking in the margins of the former, their souls
irretrievably lost, aren't quite as haunting or perverse as the
half-alive figures lurking in the latter, their souls irretrievably
corrupted. Werwolves and vampires? Pfft. Try lamplighters, pavement
artists, honey traps and wranglers, not to mention the much-feared scalphunters.
John Le Carre (pseudonym for David Cornwell) was an officer in both
MI5 and MI6; he eventually used variations on the terminology spoken
in his workplace to help paint the gray world of
his novels.
Tinker,
Tailor, Soldier, Spy, published in 1974, is the first third of
what is generally considered Le Carre's masterwork, The Karla
Trilogy. The novel tells the story of former spymaster George Smiley,
dragged out of retirement to root out a possible mole--an
'undercover' or 'deep penetration' agent who has risen in the ranks
and now helps run The Circus, Britain's secret service (so named
because the services' fictitious headquarters are located at the
famous junction). His former boss Control had narrowed the
suspects down to five people before he died (of a broken heart, some
say), and given them corresponding codenames: “Tinker,” “Tailor,”
“Soldier.” Skip “Sailor”--sounds too much like “Tailor;”
reject “Rich Man” for being inappropriate and substitute “Poor Man” instead. Smiley himself was (and I'm sure the irony wasn't lost on Control)
“Beggarman.”
That's
it, really, the entire premise (partially based on the true case of real-life double agent Kim Philby); all the complexity that follows is
just Le Carre jumping back and forth in time and space to piece
together the narrative, odd bits of knowledge painstakingly collected that, paradoxically, Smiley already knew in one form or another; he just was never able to bring himself to work the puzzle (the novel you might say is one long, jumbled hunt Smiley conducts in the thickets of his
memory). The challenge of any adaptation, of course, is to translate
this complexity to the small or large screen, transfer it so its
greatest trick is preserved: that at the right moment the whole thing
falls away to reveal the simplicity, the elegance of the mystery's
solution.
The
first adaptation of the novel was done for the small screen, directed
by John Irvin and starring the late Alec Guinness. It ran for over
three hundred minutes; Alfredson's 2011 version runs for a little
over a hundred and twenty.
It's
easy to beat up the latter with the former--to my mind, still the
definitive version. At six hours, the mini-series had room to
breathe, to follow Le Carre's vision more faithfully; Guiness in turn
had room to carve intricate detailing into his
role. He had a beautifully modulated voice (it was as if his larynx
was fluted) and he could sound like a weary bureaucrat or relentless schoolmaster, sometimes alternating from one to the other within a line of
dialogue--this mix of self-effacement and strength was so influential
Le Carre reportedly modeled Smiley more and more on Guinness'
performance in the subsequent novels.
Director Irvin's straightforward approach helps ground the story in an everyday world; when asked what The Circus' offices looked like, Le Carre noted that they resembled the BBC offices--whereupon Irvin filmed some of his interiors there. The result: greater authenticity at (presumably) considerable savings, with a possibly unintended but nevertheless potent point--that intelligence organizations are essentially bureaucracies, are as faceless and joyless and impersonally malevolent as any other government or corporate entity. They are us, basically, only more so.
Director Irvin's straightforward approach helps ground the story in an everyday world; when asked what The Circus' offices looked like, Le Carre noted that they resembled the BBC offices--whereupon Irvin filmed some of his interiors there. The result: greater authenticity at (presumably) considerable savings, with a possibly unintended but nevertheless potent point--that intelligence organizations are essentially bureaucracies, are as faceless and joyless and impersonally malevolent as any other government or corporate entity. They are us, basically, only more so.
The
length, the look, the feel of it was of a piece--how could a feature improve on this? How could maverick actor Gary Oldman improve on
Guinness? Apparently they didn't try; the filmmaker gives the film an
entirely new image, magnificent Edwardian-style buildings refitted to serve as offices somehow aestheticized,
made to look beautiful--all faded red brick, pitted stone,
stained green steel (look carefully and in one shot you can spot an open pit surrounded by railings, the floor below teeming with staff). For the
Circus archives Alfredson presents an ant-farm view, layer
atop layer of flooring and library shelves in labyrinthine cutaway, full of people scurrying
right and left carrying files (Is the image digitally created? Where
does he find these amazing locations?). Not, perhaps as grimly
realistic as the BBC offices, but ravishingly decrepit.
Against
this gorgeous decayed backdrop Alfredson uses a series of motifs.
The suspects are represented by chess pieces with tiny photographs
taped clumsily to their necks; Control's fall is represented by
repeated flashbacks of Budapest, and the shooting and capture of Jim
Prideaux (his crooked body lying on the street echoes Control's body
lying crookedly on the side of the hospital bed). In the mini-series
the Circus' rumpus room, its holy of holies where four of the
suspects meet, is an anonymous conference room with antique (or faux
antique) wood chairs; on film Alfredson has an entirely different
conception--a large space lined with what at first glance looks like a
ghastly checkerboard pattern, in that shade of unnatural orange
made popular in the '70s. On closer inspection the checkerboard is even
more bizarre--orange foam sculpted in corrugated patterns to dampen
sound, helping proof the room from all kinds of eavesdropping. The
effect is unreal: entering it is like entering another world, where
time has stopped and potent spells (or state-of-the-art technology,
same difference) have evoked an enchanted cave of sufficient security
and quiet (or at least the illusion of security and quiet) to allow
one to scheme, and map out a plan of action.
Film
theorist David Bordwell in a series of excellent posts compares
Guinness and Oldman's Smileys, noting that Guinness is like an old pedagogue explaining each turn and twist of the intricate plot;
Oldman's Smiley is a more opaque creature, his mouth hanging absentmindedly open,
his glasses obscured by reflected light. He keeps his cards so
close to his chest you begin to project your own thoughts and feelings on his tabula rasa of a face. He's a more brusque
Smiley, though (possibly because he has less time?); he pressures his bosses and victims till they both crack. He's an angrier
version of the character (as angry perhaps (or so Bordwell believes) as Le Carre must have felt towards
Philby), but the anger is banked, hidden, so as not to alarm others. We really see that fire only once, when Smiley finally confronts the mole; for the
most part it's like a steam engine thudding away relentlessly behind
steel plating--you sense it more than you actually see it.
I
look at Oldman and despite Bordwell's insistence that it's a
variation, I do see a lot of Guinness' Smiley in him; I doubt if
Oldman can avoid this (Guiness did help shape Smiley's future
incarnations). Oldman's approach basically is to preserve the mystery of
Smiley, somehow give us the sense of a man hiding the rage inside him--the rage burning like thermite through the length of a foreshortened story.
Is it different? Alfredson takes the liberty of having his aged spymaster take the occasional dip in a heated outdoor pool (presumably with other retirees), and it's startling to see Smiley, who one pictures as a shapeless mass of flesh wrapped in thick tweed, paddle his way across the steaming water, his receded chin breaking surface like a ship's prow. Smiley in swim trunks? One shudders.
At one point Smiley confides to his torchbearer Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch) about the time he actually met Karla, and here for once the film exceeds the series--where Irvin made the conventional choice and showed the encounter in a flashback, Alfredson stays with Oldman who, using nearly all the text from the equivalent passage in the novel, sketches what happened.
Gradually an image emerges from Oldman's words. Alfredson's camera slowly glides around Oldman, the lenses fixated on him, giving us the sense of someone (Guillam, perhaps) watching--of someone unable to look away; Oldman gazes at no particular point, and as he speaks we realize that he's gazing not at anything before him but rather at something behind him, in the distant past. His gaze becomes so intense you actually feel a third presence in the room with eyes every bit as implacable, a ghost almost (believe it or not, I could feel the hairs on my arms stiffen and rise), a living if insubstantial memory mocking him with its inscrutability.
That's the moment when I finally bought into Oldman's Smiley, the moment that made me understand: this Smiley held a vendetta of a kind against Karla and was determined to root out the mole.
Is the film better? Not definitively, no; I'd call this a summarized, stylized version to the mini-series' expansive, more truthful one. I'd call Oldman's Smiley an enigma nursing a relentless (if repressed) bloodlust to Guinness' more empathic mandarin. One takes different pleasures from one, dwells on different flaws from the other. On its own, though, I can say this of the film: excellent interpretation, and one of the best features of last year.
Is it different? Alfredson takes the liberty of having his aged spymaster take the occasional dip in a heated outdoor pool (presumably with other retirees), and it's startling to see Smiley, who one pictures as a shapeless mass of flesh wrapped in thick tweed, paddle his way across the steaming water, his receded chin breaking surface like a ship's prow. Smiley in swim trunks? One shudders.
At one point Smiley confides to his torchbearer Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch) about the time he actually met Karla, and here for once the film exceeds the series--where Irvin made the conventional choice and showed the encounter in a flashback, Alfredson stays with Oldman who, using nearly all the text from the equivalent passage in the novel, sketches what happened.
Gradually an image emerges from Oldman's words. Alfredson's camera slowly glides around Oldman, the lenses fixated on him, giving us the sense of someone (Guillam, perhaps) watching--of someone unable to look away; Oldman gazes at no particular point, and as he speaks we realize that he's gazing not at anything before him but rather at something behind him, in the distant past. His gaze becomes so intense you actually feel a third presence in the room with eyes every bit as implacable, a ghost almost (believe it or not, I could feel the hairs on my arms stiffen and rise), a living if insubstantial memory mocking him with its inscrutability.
That's the moment when I finally bought into Oldman's Smiley, the moment that made me understand: this Smiley held a vendetta of a kind against Karla and was determined to root out the mole.
Is the film better? Not definitively, no; I'd call this a summarized, stylized version to the mini-series' expansive, more truthful one. I'd call Oldman's Smiley an enigma nursing a relentless (if repressed) bloodlust to Guinness' more empathic mandarin. One takes different pleasures from one, dwells on different flaws from the other. On its own, though, I can say this of the film: excellent interpretation, and one of the best features of last year.
First published in Businessworld, 3.23.12