I have to get this out of my system: with the decided lack of original songs nominated for Academy Awards in 2011, does anyone else wish that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy had a theme song? It would have been great if it had started like a Bond theme, all brass and soaring, sexy vocals, and then after, like 60 seconds, just degenerate into a sad instrumental mostly done on a cello.
Of course, I have not studied music, per se, unless you count "imitating scores with slightly mocking mouth noises" a study.
But enough about what I do whenever I hear the score to The Artist. I saw Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy this weekend at the Sundance (608 version), a movie theater chain specifically for individuals such as myself who aspire to have champagne tastes but also like to play at being an engaged liberal nerd once in a while.
I have never read Le Carre, and though I was familiar with the title, I didn't have a great deal of background on the characters or storyline. I had also only read one or two reviews, both of which were positive but focused on the film's glacial pace. There are so few films I go into with that decided lack of prep work, and I feel like I was greatly rewarded for it.
(And then spoilers happen after this.)
The tone and time and place of the film seems like it could almost be a sibling to Mad Men in a way: the business end of British Intelligence is largely unglamorous, all very proper and businesslike, until you get to the swinging Christmas party or listen closely to any of the words that fall out of Haydon's mouth. Suits are tweedy or polyester. Smiles are few and far between. And underneath it all is a melancholy that permeates the fabric of the film but is almost invisible save a few moments where it emerges and punches you in the gut. The few individuals who have dared to show empathy or affection--Ricky Tarr, Peter Guillam, and even George Smiley--seem to be punished for being human for a moment or two.
I loved how the movie had its own lexicon and did not provide a key, instead making it such a regular part of the characters' exchanges that I eventually caught on. I liked that everyone seemed suspect, not due to choking moments of foreshadowing, but because everyone was so distant and quiet. And the movie parceled out enough sudden, shocking violence to remind everyone of the stakes without making it seem like the whole point of the proceedings.
I found myself thinking a lot about not only the conspiracy and the search for the mole, but about some of those aforementioned moments of humanity. I don't think I realized how pivotal the scene was when Smiley describes to Guillam his meeting with a potential Russian defector, a general, appealing to the man's domesticity and inadvertently exposing more about himself than he ever intended. Ultimately, it is that meeting that gives Haydon the idea to approach Smiley's wife Ann for an affair. When Haydon says the words "Nothing personal" to Smiley, it's so, so haunting how very much Haydon means it.
Colin Firth plays Bill Haydon, and for anyone who remembers Colin Firth before he became Mr. Darcy or Mark Darcy or Colin Firth (whatever his character's name was in Love Actually), seeing him kick ass as a viper disguised as a seemingly innocuous, charming middle-management type isn't much of a surprise. He excels at being a sexually manipulative creep, right, people who saw Circle of Friends? The most graceful part of the performance is that the degree and depth of his duplicity, the level to which he uses affection and sex for personal gain and protection of his little shell game isn't even truly apparent until you really start thinking about that soft, sensual smile he gives Prideaux in the Christmas party flashback at the very end of the film.
Gary Oldman is incredible, too, so placid, his determined investigation of his former peers barely seeming like an effort until you see his right hand, Guillam, sweating f'ing bullets trying to get in and out of their building with files. I think my favorite scene wasn't necessarily all the Oscar reel footage that got played, but the cool, honest way Smiley promised Tarr that he'd do what he could to locate Irinia, knowing full well from Prideaux that she was long dead. He may have loved his unfaithful wife too much, and it may have weakened him at the game for a moment or two, but he still knows how to give people what they want when the job calls for it.
I was doomed to love Guillam from the outset, since he was played by Benedict Cumberbatch, which meant that on occasion, he smiled in that particular way that always touches my heart. Because I'm still all mopey and emotional over s2 of Sherlock, watching him break down into tears at one point probably doomed me to then dissolve into incoherent half-sentences about how much I like his face and feel invested in character's safety, even though he is wearing a Robert Redford circa Butch Cassidy heap of wig on his head.
In closing, I have continued to think about the film over the last 24 hours and will myself to see brief moments of it so I can feel it out more. I not only enjoyed it, but I feel like I'm still benefiting from sorting it out.
Also, Tom Hardy has disconcertingly plush lips.
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