Movies: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Friday, January 6, 2012
Who is the mole in The Circus? Is it (from left)
Toby Esterhase (David Dencik), Bill Haydon(Colin Firth), Percy Alleline (Toby Jones), Control (John Hurt)
George Smiley (Gary Oldman) or Roy Bland (Ciaran Hinds)?
Photo: Jack English/Focus Features
The world of “The Circus” in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is murky and dark. That could be because “The Circus” in this case is a code name for the highest levels of British intelligence. Based on John le Carré’s novel set in 1973 when Russia was still the major enemy of the west, the labyrinthine plot follows the agents as they attempt to find the leak in their organization, the high-level operative who is giving their secrets to the Russians.
The movie centers on George Smiley (Gary Oldman) a retired agent called back to active duty to help Control, the director of the service (John Hurt), find the mole that he believes is one of the top agents in the service.
Control is convinced that the mole is Smiley or one of the other elite agents — Bill Haydon (Colin Firth), Percy Alleline (Toby Jones), Roy Bland (Cieran Hinds) or Toby Esterhase (David Dencik). During the hunt, an agent is killed and that killing led to the firing of Smiley and Control.
Much of the story is told through flashbacks to a holiday party held by The Circus. This serves throughout the movie to tease us with tidbits of character and information and, in the end, all is revealed.
As Smiley, Gary Oldman is magnificent. Playing a character made famous in a portrayal by Alec Guinness and well remembered by fans of the original, Oldman still manages to make the character his own.
The plot is convoluted, an anti-James Bond story when all the reasons for what happens are never obvious or clear. But it is intriguing. Director Tomas Alfredson and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema keep it all dark, mysterious and difficult.
The Cold War is over, those days gone. So, indeed, is the world inhabited by Smiley and the others in The Circus. This serves to make the film rather a rather quaint picture of days gone by.
While much of the film’s ambient authenticity come from the fact that le Carré was a British spy whose cover was blown by the infamous Cambridge graduate Kim Philby, the British intelligence officer who supplied secrets to the Russians and then defected to Russia, even after he’d been awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) by the Queen.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is not like most of today’s movies. That makes it at times difficult to follow but always interesting to watch.
(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
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