My Ebert Connection to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

“I confess I was confused some of the time and lost at other times; the viewer needs to hold in mind a large number of characters, a larger number of events and an infinite number of possibilities.”

 – Roger Ebert

When I read Ebert’s review of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, I was relieved. I’m in good company, for the above quote was my exact response to the movie. In fact, I had to go home and look up the synopsis of this movie in order to write this review.  That synopsis reading included a lot of “oh, ok, now I get it” sort of thoughts, but I must confess, nothing shocking. I found that for the most part, I had all the pieces of the puzzle laid out in the correct order, but just hadn’t locked them all into place.

If you were to see this movie with the thought that it was a spy thriller in the tradition of, say, James Bond, you would be sorely mistaken.  This is not the action-packed, hunky leading man meets sex-kitten, 007, Pussy Galore movie we’ve come to associate with spy thrillers; rather, this was a look at what real spy work must be like, not the Hollywood version.  Leading men are tired and cigarette-stained, leading ladies (if indeed there are any) are merely peripheral. Sexual portrayals are not shot with moving music or steamy dialogue; rather, they are shot unemotionally, as a backdrop to other activity.

            None of the characters were portrayed with any emotional attachment that would lead you to think “he’s one of the good guys”. In fact, before I read the synopsis, I viewed the ending of the movie as a possible twist where the supposed hero was actually the villain.  This is one of several ways this film was different from your typical Hollywood offering.

            Based on John Le Carre’s 1974 novel, the tale was first made into a BBC miniseries in 1979. This could have been promising, as it would give the viewer more time to disseminate the riddles and come up with an intelligent conclusion.  Le Carre would have known his material; he himself was a British spy betrayed by a double agent to Russia.

            The movie stars Toby Jones, Colin Firth, Ciaran Hinds, David Dencik  and Gary Oldman, whose performance earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Set in London in the early 1970’s, the movie centers around the premise that there is a mole in the top levels of the British Secret Service, selling secrets to the Russians. Who that mole might be is the question that must be answered, and we are fairly certain early on that one of the five or six characters we are following is the culprit.

            What follows is a complex and perplexing weave of various datelines, story lines, and characterizations. We find that Bill Haydon (Colin Firth) aka “Tailor,” has been having an affair with the wife of George Smiley, (Gary Oldman) aka “Beggar man”.  This serves no real purpose in the movie; or does it?  This is one of the details I filed away, but for which I never seemed to find a reason.  There is a lot of double-agent business going on, which made it difficult to follow.  Secrets, which the head group at MI6 believed to be bogus, were passed to the Russians with the hope that the Russians would then give their real secrets, but because of the mole, real secrets were being passed to the Russians, and only bogus information was received in return.  The American’s were involved at some point, but I’m not sure why. Sounds confusing?  Don’t worry, it is.

            The most redeeming part of this film was the cinematography.  The footage is grainy, very similar to movies of the early 1970’s (think The Parallax View, only darker and less engaging) with dreary images that clearly set the tone.  For the most part the camera work was static, but there were whole sequences where the camera would pan wide, then zoom in for close ups, then begin again.  At other times, the camera was almost uncomfortably close.  To be honest, I don’t remember if there was a sound track to this movie; the cinematography did so much more to set the tone and create suspense. 

            One thing that really sticks out to me about the film is its almost utter lack of emotion. Smiley shows practically no emotion when he finds out his wife is having an affair with a Haydon, and even when emotion is portrayed, it seems the viewer is supposed to simply view, not participate.

            I’m torn by this movie. On one hand, I utterly disliked the complexity and confusion, as well as the matter-of-fact portrayals and lack of emotion. But perhaps this is how I’m supposed to feel.  After all, as I stated at the beginning, this was no Bond flick, but a much more realistic look inside the world of spies and international intrigue, which is, well, complex and confusing, matter-of-fact, and without emotion.

            But that’s not why I go to movies. I go for great performances that move me, that cause me to want to talk about the movie and digest it. I am not looking for fluff; I want to have to think.  But I don’t want to have to think this hard.  There was no relaxing during this movie and letting it play out to the climactic revelation. I had to be “on” all the time, constantly trying to fit the pieces together. It was not fun.

            I’ll begin where I left off, with my Ebert connection to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.  Roger said it so well, I couldn’t have said it better myself:

                        “I enjoyed the film's look and feel, the perfectly modulated performances, and the whole tawdry world of spy and counterspy, which must be among the world's most dispiriting occupations. But I became increasingly aware that I didn't always follow all the allusions and connections. On that level, "Tinker Tailor" didn't work for me.”