Mania Grade: B+

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Info:

• Starring: Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Mark Strong and Ciaran Hinds
• Written by: John le Carre
• Directed by: Thomas Alfredson
• Studio: Focus Features
• Rating: R
• Run Time: 127 minutes
• Series:

Mania Review: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

John le Carre’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy constitutes the gold standard for stories about the intelligence game: an eerily accurate, coldly logical exercise with as much in common with popular notions of secret agents as Silence of the Lambs has with Pollyanna. An adaptation was only a matter of time… and in fact was undertaken thirty years ago with a British miniseries that many people considered definitive. But Hollywood – ever eager for recognizable brand names – apparently thinks otherwise, and now we have a new version of the story for our edification and amusement. The surprise is how well it holds up considering the strength of its predecessor.

To call it sleeker than the first adaptation does it a disservice; you won’t find a slower and more deliberately paced movie all year. That’s not intended as a criticism; Tinker Tailor strips away the glamour and excitement most people associate with spies, leaving behind an unbearably intense chess match in its wake. Gunplay is absolutely minimal in this story, limited to a few brief sequences at the beginning and the end. The landscape is dull and dreary: slate gray offices on nameless streets where men in three-piece suits stare at the walls and think. There’s no assassins on jet skis here, no bikini girls parachuting in with the secret plans to save the day. It’s nothing but an inscrutable mountain of data – created from a thousand sources at the height of the Cold War – and the desiccated individuals charged with making sense of it.

Chief among them is George Smiley (Gary Oldman), an old-school Englishman with enormous glasses who never so much as raises his voice. He appears detached to the point of somnambulism. Not even his wife’s infidelity can provoke a reaction out of him, no matter how deeply he may feel the hurt. But he possesses a clinical mind capable of astonishing analytical feats, and his slow, methodical approach to the game yields potent results. So when word comes through that a Soviet mole has infiltrated the upper ranks of M16, Smiley becomes the minister’s chief means of ferreting him out.

His task demands a lot of patience from the viewer; we need to adopt his frame of mind and look for the signals that lie many layers below the surface, rather than having it spelled out to us in neon letters. But for those so inclined, that discipline becomes a reward all its own, as we slowly immerse ourselves in the kind of exacting temperament this world requires.

Director Thomas Alfredson makes an ideal choice to helm the endeavor. He previously directed the original Let the Right One In, and his sensibilities fit Smiley’s perceptions like a glove. He focuses on dingy, spirit-leeching spaces that his vampire girl would feel right at home in: narrow halls, closed doors, and rooms whose furnishings speak to all manner of hidden mysteries. Within such surroundings, the mind turns inward, looking for clues and evidence amid a churning ocean of ever-changing perceptions.

Smiley excels because he doesn’t allow emotion to cloud his judgment. Indeed, when he does – when the stirrings of a genuine human soul emerge from that blank façade – it actually makes it harder for him to do his job and keep his country safe. His patriotism is unquestioned, but even he speculates on whether the puzzles he solves have become an end unto themselves rather than steps towards a larger goal. Oldman shines in the part, as expected (though he can’t top Alec Guinness who starred in the original and made it one of the high points of his career). We can’t read anything in his face and his dialogue is severely truncated, but while other actors faced with such limitations would simply bore us, Oldman becomes a source of endless fascination. We study him as he studies his quarry, and in the process become completely absorbed in him. He’s aided by a who’s who of British actors – including Colin Firth, John Hurt and Tom Hardy (who’s making Bane an increasingly delectable prospect every time we see him) – but the show belongs to its top-billed star.

With him as our guide, Tinker Tailor expertly schools us on how spies really work. That we’ve taken this trip in other forms before doesn’t lessen its strength, and while the easily bored may find it hard going, those attuned to more cerebral entertainment will likely be hypnotized. Le Carre could play those cards better than anyone; how gratifying that this new rendition is able to keep up with him.