Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

We all know spy movies. Tuxedoed men with chiselled jaws running through foreign cities with impossibly pretty girls, firing hi-tech gadgets around with the same nonchalance they fire off pithy one liners. Or modern ones with whip-shot editing and frenetic fight scenes.

The spy game of the early seventies was clearly much different. Based on the novel John Le Carre, (himself a former intelligence agent in real life), the spying of the seventies was a much slower, drabber affair. This new adaptation of Tinker, Tailor (there was a classic TV adaptation in 1979 starring Alec Guinness) is one of the brownest films I’ve ever seen. Everything seems to be covered in a postwar depression, a miasma of ennui filtering through all the performances. Despite being set in 1973, there is no 70’s scifi glamour on show, no funky disco, but worn and battered things from the 50’s. The bits that take place in England are set amongst a stuffy and sterile office, unfurnished boarding-houses, suburban houses screaming with repression, old bookshops reeking (presumably) of mothballs. This isn’t to say the film is boring, not in anyway, but it requires the viewer to slow down, take each and every note from the actor’s faces and mannerisms. Many times the film will look deep into the wrinkles of an actor’s face, asking you to look for the subtext.

A council of 4 intelligence agents sits at the very top of Circus, the codename for MI6. There is a rumour of a mole within the 4, leaking secrets to the soviets, and former agent George Smiley is brought back in from his forced retirement to find out who it is. George Smiley seemingly takes no joy from this, played in a understated, brilliantly laconic performance by Gary Oldman. As usual for spy movies, people talk in riddles, trying to match up their personal feelings that sometimes sit at odds of the feelings that they’re serving their country. Benedict Cumberbatch is excellent as Smiley’s gopher/ running boy Peter Quillam, and the 4 titular characters all manage to pull excellent sleazy performances. Many are tipping Colin Firth for oscar glory, but it is universally well acted across the board, with a particularly fine performance from Toby Jones as “tinker”.

This isn’t Saturday evening turn-your-brain-off fun. But slow down to its pace, let it soak into you, and you will be rewarded with a tense, satisfying thriller that lingers in the memory long after the lights come up.