Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Spies Like Us
or
Eyes Wide Shut* (The Fine Art of Concealment)

I love spy movies.  Growing up in the 1960's, with the advent of the James Bond films—an amalgamation of Ian Fleming's novels and the films of Alfred Hitchcock (particularly North By Northwest)—and concurrent with the 60's embrace of the "anti-hero," my perceptions of movies were warped and laser-beamed with the image of duplicity, secrecy and emotional coolness.  Spies are not nice people—it doesn't matter what kind of cars they drive—they are both untrustworthy and trustworthy, they make moral judgements (sometimes snap decisions) of who is worthy of each.  Keepers of secrets, cataloguers and manipulators of weakness, spies use people as weapons, ignore collateral damage and sleep the sleep of the just knowing that the ends justify the means.  Fleming's secret agent was the last vestige of the romantic spy (despite the many imitations that ensued), a double-crossroads between the old and the new—a "gentleman-spy," chivalrous, but more than willing to plunder the spoils of war, and a thug...but with exquisite taste.

But the gold standard ("finger"-less division) for the times, which embraced the Cold War** were the novels of John le Carré (French for "The Square," which reflected the author's choice of creating novels around the moral rectitude of naive and sentimental men in an amoral world) who wrote about spies as functionaries and bureaucrats, rather than super-men with toys, and the epitome of those was "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," the first novel in "The Karla Trilogy,*** which pitted two spymasters against each other in a fight to The Brandenburg Gate—the mysterious Russian, Karla, and George Smiley, an agent for British Intelligence (which le Carré dubbed "The Circus").  Smiley had appeared as a minor character in previous le Carré books, but with "Tinker..." he became the focal point, not only the best man in the service, but also its weakest link, intellectually smart as a whip, but emotionally dull as a stump.  In it, he is called upon to investigate his own former Intelligence agency, as there is suspicion that there is a "mole"—a double agent—very high up in the ranks.****  A thick book, filled with intricate detail and Dickensian characterizations with deep motivations, it was adapted (like the film, without commas in the title) in 1979 into a 7-part mini-series by the BBC and director John Irvin with Alec Guinness as Smiley, a version which was considered definitive.

When word that Peter Morgan had scripted a film version, it seemed inconceivable that such a compressed time-frame could do the novel justice.

And, incredibly, it does...even at times going the mini-series one or two better...by integrating sequences that le Carré never bothered with or thought of that throw in a lot of information in a very short space of time, the difference between a novelistic and cinematic experience: a Christmas party at the Circus, where knowing glances are exchanged between brother-spies and covert operations are, even there, in effect;***** the shooting of Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong, quite different from how we've seen him before in his villainous roles of late) on a secret mission from Control (John Hurt) to try to learn the identity of "the mole" in their ranks; a warning to Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch) to "get his house in order" that leads to a painful personal decision that reflects certain issues among the suspects; and an interrogation scene that adds tragic ramifications to the story of Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy), but also illuminates the cruel humor of the Russian Karla.

And the "Cold War" scenario gets even chillier given Swedish director Tomas Alfredson's handling of the film.  The men investigating and being investigated (Ciarán Hinds, Colin Firth, Toby Jones, and David Dencik) are already cold fish, but with the script and Alfredson's direction, they're almost completely cyphers, the only glimpses of a personal life are revelatory of each man's weaknesses.  Also, Alfredson's framing schemes involve as much mis-direction as direction, shooting above, over, around and through as many obstacles and distractions, frames and panes of glass, a maze of obfuscations that confuse the path to true seeing, putting us in the same position as the story's primary Truth-Seeker, George Smiley (Gary Oldman).

Early on, Smiley visits an oculist to get a new pair of huge owl-like glasses to see more clearly before embarking on his secret mission for the government.  Those glasses also provide another barrier to his eyes, the window to his soul.  Oldman's performance is brilliant, deceptively simple—but that's not the point.  One is struck, perpetually, throughout the film, of how much Oldman conveys with the simplest—and smallest—of movements.  It is to the actor's credit (and Alfredson's) that so much of the actor's performance is seen from behind, his face unseen, but it matters not; George Smiley is not given to overt actions, but covert ones, minor moves of chess-pieces that mark the battles in intellectual wars.  His brevity and economy in everything—that weighs so heavily on his personal life and makes him vulnerable, comes to the fore here, making this odd performance a perfect encapsulation of the role and is a further refinement and definition of the character of le Carré's greatest creation—George Smiley—betraying nothing, always betrayed.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a Full-Price Ticket.

* The origin of the phrase "Eyes Wide Shut," the title of Stanley Kubrick's last film, originates as a colorful turn of phrase in le Carré's original novel "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" (Kubrick and David Cornwell— le Carré's real name—were good friends, although Kubrick never enticed him to work on a script with him). It's the scene where Connie Sachs is explaining what happened to the Russian double-agent Polyakov and how he was seduced by a "honey trap" (le Carré spy-code for a female counter-agent) and how Polyakov, against his better judgement, walked in with "his eyes wide shut."  That turn of phrase is not in the movie, probably BECAUSE of the association with the Kubrick film.

** When detente eased the tensions between the West and East, le Carré presciently set his rifle-sights on the next enemies of the state—capitalists and industrialists who pledged allegiance to the almighty dollar rather than to any flag or deity.  Supposedly, trade partners don't war against each other (hence, the genesis of the EU and NAFTA), but has the damage those entities wrought on the world economy really been beneficial?  Is anyone winning, when we all go down together?

*** The others in the series are "The Honourable Schoolboy" and "Smiley's People."

**** This parallels the true life upheaval MI-6 went through in the 1950's, with the Cambridge Five scandal.

***** One inspired touch is The Circus Crowd singing along with an old song that I only thought I remembered—the title tune from a long-forgotten Bond knock-off (sung by Sammy Davis, Jr.) called The Second Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World, which nicely plays in with British Intelligence's subordinate view of themselves as "also-ran's" to their American "Cousins" in the CIA.

Easy Virtue

Easy Virtue (Stephan Elliott, 2008) Okay, it may be a weak recommendation to say this may be the best performance Jessica Biel has ever given, but she holds her own in a good cast that includes Kristin Scott Thomas (as a society woman who has seen far better days) and Colin Firth (the head of the household, who has only returned bodily from WWI), who are quite bent out of their stiff upper lips that their son (Ben Barnes) has married 1) an adventuress, 2) a race-car driver, 3) a widow, and 4) an (gasp!) American—all in the form of a comely Biel.

"What am I to do with this bauble of a woman?" fusses Mrs. Whittaker.  "Hang her?" says her barely-engaged husband.

The Noel Coward play has been filmed once before (by Alfred Hitchcock in 1928, during his silent era...consider that, a silent version of a Noel Coward play) and Elliott's version tries mightily to make it more hip, making Biel's Larita Whittaker more of a liberated woman, rather than just a libertine, and her inability to navigate the iceberg-laden chilly waters at the Whitaker residence (which, at their most hapless, resembles something that might appear in Meet the Parents) puts a strain on her puppy-loveish young marriage.

Try as she might to ingratiate herself into the family, it all turns perfectly horrid, with no help from her cluelessly entitled young husband (who thinks he can have it all, and can't fathom why everybody doesn't just get along).  Fact is, the Whittaker estate isn't so much a home as a castle, protecting itself from the cruelty of the outside world, and only those touched by that cruelty have the grace to rise above, if they can.  Larita gravitates to the unsmiling Mr. Whittaker for advice, his cynicism to keeping up appearances, coinciding with a wish she cannot fulfill for her husband's/his son's sake.

There has to be a better way, if not for the family then for herself.   What else can they do to her? 

Discover her secrets, maybe.

The two films diverge at this point: Hitchcock's hinges on a portrait done of Larita that colors her husband's death; Elliott's has that portrait, too (amusingly), but comes up with a more modern tragedy for Larita to cover up that wouldn't have "played" in the 20's, when Coward first wrote the play.  It gives the film a depth, and distinguishes Larita from the rest of the family-members, and leads to an inevitable conclusion—Coward's way out.

A truffle; a bon-bon; a bauble.  Easy Virtue has a grand time sending its message on the clash of the classes, filling it with period tunes (and ending with one out of period, but apt), and a cast making the most of Coward's words.  Not one to be dismissed.

A Single Man

"For What It's Firth"

I've been joking that any movie directed by former Gucci designer Tom Ford would be entirely black screen and gold letters—I mean, look at that poster.

And the potential danger of the movie with ties so close to the fashion industry is that it's aesthetic will be design-oriented rather than story-oriented. It'll look great, but will it communicate? Will it tell a story, or will it evoke a mystique, like those oblique Ridley Scott perfume ads? Is it going to be one of those movies where the sets overwhelm the people dwarfed by them? Will it be accessible to the average movie-goer, or will it only appeal to "Project: Runway" addicts? The film has drawn some adoring praise from the East Coast (where everyone is six degrees from being bitch-slapped by a Vogue employee), but on the West Coast, where fashion is defined by Dockers in the South and plaid shirts in the North, the reviews have been skeptical ("Well, it looks nice...but...").

The film could be as empty...as a fantasy.

That's why the first hour is a tough slog, precious with "just-so" framing,* a set-designer's aesthetic that belies story logic—he's an English professor living in an impeccable glass house with a house-keeper, drives a BMW with wood trim and dresses like a tweedy James Bond—and a cutesy color trick, going through his life in a muted drained palette and when dreaming, fantasizing, or otherwise engaged, the screen blooms to full-color. Editing is somewhat nightmarish, with conversations split between full-face angles and cold side-shots that feel like a slap in the face. And every man is rakish thin with fine tailoring, the women in overdone bee-hives with not a hair out of place (it's set in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis). All the people are beautiful but impenetrable, surface creations only skin-deep. A sunning memory staged at California's Vasquez Rock seems more about the landscape and not about the figures in relation to it.

But Colin Firth as the protagonist George Falconer, even though evoking Michael Caine's "Alfie," keeps putting a human edge on the cut-glass sterility of Ford's images. Even when it seems Ford's editing or poor mixing of the narration works against him, Firth rises above and makes Falconer a seething interior in the icy exterior. Falconer, eight months from the death of his lover (Matthew Goode) in a car accident, decides that today will be the last day of his life—he teaches, cleans out his desk, puts his affairs and funeral clothes in order, never giving a trace to the public world what his intentions are. It's a great performance—Firth doesn't even look like himself, usually a bit more slouchy and unkempt—and might even turn off the fans so impressed with his TV Mr. Darcy from "Pride and Prejudice." And he pulls off some tough scenes without disposing of the mask of civility that Falconer shows the world, the "invisibleness" with which he strolls through life. Even a scene of suicide preparation becomes a comic display of interior finickiness that elicits morbid laughs with the psychic horror.

And then, suddenly, Ford stops being a stylist and turns into a director. The facades fade away, and it becomes two actors acting: Firth, on top of his game and a young actor, hired for his boyish good looks, but not much in the way of acting chops. And, instead of showing his cleverness with the camera or the design or the color scheme, it's just Ford the writer-director telling a story, making you feel it, bridging gaps and universality to a dramatic situation. Where he makes Falconer's encounter with former lover Charlotte (Julianne Moore) cruel and hysteric, the late-night encounter with one of his students avoids the snickering possibilities and turns human and decent. The hair (and people), no longer shellacked in place, but recognizable in their actions and motivations.

At one point, Falconer states that his New Year's Resolution is to "let go of the past, completely, entirely and forever."

It's only when Ford drops his own baggage that "A Single Man" becomes good film-making and good story-telling. The director becomes less concerned with Tom Ford, the designer-label, and about what he is conveying, not what he is photographing.

Consider this, then, a "student" film, with its pretentious notions calling attention to the artifice until it can concentrate on the art. It makes one anticipate the next film, the one that will fulfill the spark of talent of which "A Single Man" provides a tantalizing glimpse.

"A Single Man" is a Rental, with much promise for the future.

* Hey, I love a well-composed shot, I truly do. But what is it conveying? Why that angle, and no other—why put the edges there? In "A Single Man," it's there to make it "look good."

Bridget Jones's Diary

"Bridget Jones's Diary" (Sharon Maguire, 2001) Tarty little strumpet of a movie with a predominantly female crew ('though Richard Curtis of "Four Weddings and a Funeral." "Notting Hill," "Love Actually" and Andrew Davies whose done every BBC adaptation of Jane Austen contributed to the screenplay), and a knock-out performance by Renée Zellweger that should have won some sort of award (though she was nominated for Best Actress Oscars and BAFTA's). Frankly, she had me at her drunken drop-kick to "All By Myself" as screeched by Celine Dion.*

It's a deft little 21st Century time-warp of Jane Austen plotting where Bridget (Zellwegger), in a quest to monitor her vices, weight and love-life, begins to chronicle her life, and, probably to have something to write about, becomes embroiled in an affair with her slutty boss (Hugh Grant --showing top performance on every oily cylinder) and a prickly relationship with family "friend" and stuffed-shirt Mark Darcy. **

The whole thing is bright and saucy in that chirpy romantic style of current British comedies (written by Davies and Curtis!) and Jim Broadbent gets to slum a bit, and there's even a cameo for Honor Blackman. One might even be seduced into thinking it modern if the prevailing sentiment wasn't "Bridg' is just no good without a man." Maybe she should write about the fish that needed a bicycle.

*

** Yes, yes, I'm aware, and the point is bludgeoned home by the casting of Colin Firth, who memorably played Darcy in the much-ballyhooed 1995 BBC mini-series of "Pride and Prejudice," and is the version to whom all the others have been compared. This must have been like falling off a log for him!