'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'

Tomas Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy's very beginning makes it clear that it has no intention of following in any kind of spy-film tradition, especially not in any over-glorified James Bond iconography, as the main protagonist does not say a word until about twenty minutes in. This Le Carré adaptation presents an intricate character-study, revolving around five major characters in the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, nicknamed the Circus. The crux of the film is a mission in Hungary gone horribly wrong resulting in the dismissal of the head of the Agency, aptly named Control and his right-hand man George Smiley. After the death of Control, as a result of a terminal illness, Smiley is called out of his forced retirement to find a Soviet mole at the very top of the Circus. He partners up with the young and ambitious Peter Guillam and Ricki Tarr, a somewhat rougher agent, usually called in to do the dirty work.

What follows is not so much a fast-paced, action-fueled chase for a one-dimensional mole figure as it is the portrayal of a universe of paranoia in which the public and private secrets of the agents involved, threaten to strip them of the last trace of humanity. In this stifling sphere, anxiety takes over, as the agents attempt to come to terms with the fact that in 1970's Britain, the Cold War negates any clear-cut distinctions or moral choices. This is a world of ignominious compromises in which the identity of the mole is overshadowed by the fact that every single agent has a motive for betraying their country. In this bureaucratic microcosm of the Secret Service,inevitably standing for the political climate of the world, only the infallible belief in the concept of duty provides a justification for actions which more often than not stand in direct opposition to a common human principle of ethics. It is in the name of duty that the agents accept personal sacrifices which end up eroding any sense of subjective identity as they become puppets in a governmental scheme, chess figures in a game between two abstract principles that face each other in a war which is as cerebral as it is violent.

This is a stagnant and sterile sphere in which the agents act out of resigned automatism rather than political conviction. The film's grey and beige color scheme, the smokiness of the interiors, the slow pacing, the shallow focus shots, the lingering close-ups of inanimate objects and the wide angle shots of the wide office building all contribute to a terse atmosphere in which a sense of quiet violence committed in the name of a belief system which has become obsolete, pervades every frame.

George Smiley is a man whose yearlong dealings in the Circus seems to have drained him of any sense of personality, or color for that matter. He is the quintessential chess player, predicting every move, an analyst, unemotional, patient with an underlying sense of great personal suffering. Gary Oldman's performance is superbly understated, managing to convey the emotional destitution of a man betrayed by his wife, without ever abandoning his icy self-control. His life is dominated by the notion of absence, most notably by his wife's absence, not so much conjured vocally as hinted at visually in the pile of letters on the mantelpiece, the general atmosphere of stillness in the house, the faceless figure of a woman in a flashback. The absence of his wife in Smiley's life runs parallel with another over-shadowing absence-presence in his life, namely the figure of his opponent Karla, head of the Russian secret service. As such it comes as no surprise that his relationship with Karla is epitomized by the object of a lighter, given to Smiley by his wife and stolen by the Russian.

As we penetrate deeper into this dark and claustrophobic labyrinth that is the Circus machination, the endeavors of the characters take on a desperate, almost obsessive nature. In this atmosphere in which trust becomes the luxury of the naive, the public space suppresses the private at great personal cost and every private passion constitutes a potential advantage for the opposite party. In this stiflingly male confines, the female comes to represent absence, it comes as no surprise that the whole text is pervaded by a sense of homo eroticism, which not so much taps into the realm of the sexual as it comes to equal loyalty, a sentiment which culminates in the last scene.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is not so much a plot-based film, as the story line is classic in its almost simplistic treatment of the spy novel. This is a film that captures a mood, the densely atmospheric cinematography ties in with the tradition of The Lives of Others rather than following in the British tradition of James Bond. The languid pace, the terseness of the images and the brilliantly interwoven musical score convey a paranoid impression which is as capturing as it is stifling. The self-ironic treatment of the Charles Trenet song 'La Mer' renders the atmosphere of the Christmas party even more absurd as Santa wears a Lenin mask, marriages break apart, and secret glances disclose a reality in which mistrust and betrayal reign. The Nursery-Rhyme quality of the title reinforces this dark and twisted conveyance of a universe in which the motives for actions are cerebral to unknown, while the same actions have consequences of the most violent nature.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a cinematic masterpiece, in which the performances are superb, the cinematography is densely atmospheric, the production design near perfect and Alfredson proves again that he is a virtuoso in terms of mood and character-development. As such it is rightly claimed to be the best British cinema has to offer this year. A Must-See!!!