/Filmcast E-Mails

I listened to your Tinker Tailor discussion back in December but wasn’t able to catch up with the film until it (finally!) opened in my town last weekend.

Interestingly perhaps, this film - and your various reactions to it - remind me a lot of Never Let Me Go; your complaints (Adam’s and Dave’s) about both films and the films themselves strike me as being incredibly similar, and hey, guess what?  Here I am again to side with Devindra in a defense of Tinker Tailor, just as I defended Never Let Me Go, a while back, a defense you were kind enough to read on the podcast. :)

They are very different films, of course; among other things, one has a very dense sort of plot and the other is relatively straightforward in its plot points - but there are distinct similarities: they are both British with British sensibilities, they are both quite slow films (Adam used the word “sluggish” to describe Tinker Tailor), they both have central characters who are difficult to read (Cathy and Smiley) and who might be characterized as unfeeling, and perhaps, most importantly, both films deal in anti-climax, something Adam and Dave, very much dislike in both films.

But like Never Let Me Go, Tinker Tailor is purposeful in that anti-climax (as both Matt Singer and Devindra argued), an anti-climax that is necessary to the film if the film is to be successful in saying what it wants to say.  Dave, you argued the the film is “purposefully esoteric,” something that’s “irritating if there’s no good pay-off” and you said you’d be ok with the “uncompromising demands” (as Devindra so nicely described them) the film puts on the audience if “the ending gave you more.”

But I think the refusal to accept the anti-climax is like a refusal to accept the film on its own terms, a refusal to see what it’s trying (I think wonderfully successfully) to say in the way it needs to say it.  (Just like Never Let Me Go.)

As Matt noted, the ending is “supposed to feel anti-climactic because that’s what the movie is saying about being a spy” -  essentially that there is no reward or catharsis in a successful mission, that the world they’ve so carefully constructed is a hollow one, despite the paranoia of it, despite the labyrinthine relationships because that’s exactly what the spying life is: hollow and unfulfilling.  Do you think the film could have said that about spying if it gave us a big pay-off?   

Another point about the film’s dense plot: you all agreed that it tried to fit too much story into the film, that the film failed because it needed to be longer, a TV series perhaps.  I believe that, combined with the “sluggish”ness, the difficult denseness of the plot, like the anti-climax, is, rather than being a failure, is intentional and beautifully tied to the idea that the film is about; the film is not primarily about the journey of uncovering of a mole - it’s not supposed to be what we expect from Hollywood, a thrilling adventure with clear villains and heroes.  Finding a mole isn’t glamorous at all, it’s not exciting - it’s difficult, complex, and soul-destroying.  It involves a lot of paperwork.

Dave and Adam, you guys also complained about the fact that we never really got to know the characters, that we couldn’t really care about them by the end (and thus get a character kind of pay-off, too).  I would argue that that element, that hidden-ness of the characters is also deliberate; so immersed are they in the soulless world of spying, they have become (or are becoming or must become), themselves, as hollow and passionless as their job demands - only so many chess-pieces on a board.  You all noted that you could connect with Hardy’s character, that he was the only one who showed some emotion, and you indicated in your discussion that you wished the other characters would have had more to emotionally connect to, like Hardy’s.  But the difference between Hardy’s character and the others makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?  He is not one of those at the very top, one of those making the soulless decisions to end lives for the sake of information; he escapes that hollowness because, quite simply, he’s not the very best spy there is.  He’s only on the fringes, and he thus escapes the emotional decay the others experience.

The film does give us, however, hints of the humanity that is being suppressed in even the very best spies, and I think therein lies the tragedy and the beautifully constructed darkness of the film.  Devindra noted these hints of humanity - if you are looking for them, you will see them.  We get the scene in which Cumberbatch’s character must make a huge personal sacrifice - it’s a purposefully small and understated scene, no high-flying emotions and explosions, only a glimpse of Cumberbatch, sitting alone in his dark flat, weeping.  It tells us so much, doesn’t it?  And Smiley (one who’s been longer at the business than Cumberbatch, one who wouldn’t sit weeping, not even alone, we feel) - Smiley’s face and body work to be as emotionless as possible, and it’s less a matter of seeing the emotion itself than seeing the suppression of it.  Did you see, for example, close to the end, the slight tremble of Smiley’s hand as he was walking into his home and he saw who was sitting in a chair there?  The tremble betrays everything - he has been hollowed out, but vestiges of soul remain.  

And if we saw more soul, more emotion from Smiley than that, could the film accomplish what it wants to say about what Smiley’s life has been, about the effects of the intelligence institution?  

I honestly don’t think so, and so, if we take the film on its terms, we have to say it is, in fact, successful, wedding theme to character and story.  You all say the acting and cinematography is brilliant, and if you might also admit it is successful in giving us characters who are consistent with the ideas and story it wants to convey, can you still say, Dave, that the film is “dangerously close to being a disaster”?

You don’t have to like it, Adam and Dave - it is, indeed, a dreary film that is meant to be dreary, but I think if you are willing to engage with the ideas at its heart, you will at least appreciate it more than you indicated you do in your discussion of it.  I, myself, find the ideas fascinating and truthful, and I think the film, in spite of its deeply British character, offers us something to think about in terms of our own failing institutions, in terms of our own government, even.  I wouldn’t want to take the parallel too far, but it strikes me that the films this year have something in them that betrays our collective unease (think of Margin Call, Melancholia, Take Shelter, The Ides of March, Contagion, even something like Martha Marcy May Marlene or Planet of the Apes) - lots of films that demonstrate a dissatisfaction of the ideas and institutions we’ve taken for granted.  Tinker Tailor does that, too.

I’d love you to take a look at my write-up of Tinker Tailor here: http://ajournaloffilm.blogspot.com/2012/01/men-and-bits-of-paper-tinker-tailor.html  and see if that might convince you, if my email hasn’t done so, to consider whether there’s more to the film than a unsatisfying and faulty adaptation that “fails horribly.” (I’ve not seen the mini-series or read the book, by the way, so I wasn’t operating from a position of prior knowledge when coming to the film.)   Adam said that “Alfredson made exactly the movie he was trying to make”: I agree.  And that movie is brilliant.  

All the best to you guys - I listen every week to your podcast as well as to the Tobolowsky Files (so glad, Dave, that the Seattle show was such a success! I was dearly hoping to get to it, but couldn’t).

Cheers,

Melissa in Bellingham, WA