Customer Reviews

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy [Region 2]

5 star:		(78)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Don't blink. Don't leave the room to attend to business with the television running. Hit the pause button. This is advice for those unfamiliar with the plot of John le Carré's TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY. There is a heck of a lot going on here, a basketful of characters and three major subplots introduced in the first two episodes of this six-episode mini-series.
TINKER, TAILOR is a sinuous story of a mole in high places in the British Secret Service, also known as the Circus to insiders. Called out of retirement, a rather premature retirement, we learn, George Smiley (Alec Guinness) is called on to uncover the British official selling secrets to the Soviet enemies.
In the interesting 2002 30-minute interview on disk one writer le Carré tells us that after the initially reluctant Guinness signed on everyone wanted to work on the project, and this mini-series is studded with great actors. Fortunately so, too, because this movie takes place around restaurant tables and in dingy `safe' houses more often than in exciting, exotic locales. This one belongs to actors who can deliver in tight close-ups much more so than to special effects wizards who can blow things up prettily.
At the center of it is Guinness, who, in my opinion, is simply brilliant. In the interview le Carré mentions that Guinness was always shaving lines off the script, reducing his role, so to speak. Wasn't good at memorizing lines. There's more to it than that, though. Guinness approach is minimalist to practical non-existence. I probably won't be able to convey it, but somehow Guinness makes little to no impression. There aren't the stream of dramatic utterances, or even the little bits of business (fumbling with a tie, for instance) that most actors seem to love. Usually, the only time we see a real reaction is when a character has his back to Smiley/Guinness and mentions Smiley's wife Ann. Then the reaction, small enough, in context is powerful because it manages to break through the carefully crafted mask. Guinness realizes Smiley as a spy, a man who's genius is to make no impression, to cast no shadows and leave no clues. In lesser hands, which is pretty much anyone else you could mention, this approach would be unutterably bland, but Guinness's blandness is at times almost dazzling. The highest recommendation for this one.

The opening shot sets the tone of the entire six hours. We see a dingy meeting room in an old London office building. The radiators are indiscretely visible, the paint is peeling off the walls, the lone cabinet looks creaky. Through the windows we see it's a cold grey day. A man sits at the table smoking a cigarette; he is soon joined by a second who sits diagonally opposite him. A third man arrives with a tea cup, saucer over the cup to keep the contents from splashing. A fourth man smoking a pipe arrives, sits at the head of the table sets down a folder and opens. The scene has lasted a minute, it was silent, no music was heard, though the first man coughed once or twice. The last man then says "We are ready to begin" and low horns begin sounding the theme music. This is director John Irvin's idea of a quick scene!

Later scenes move much more methodically, and involve long conversations about the plot, but that are framed beginning and end with chit-chat about the wife and the cottage. There is some action, but we almost feel it interferes with the plot and we want to get back to those conversations that contain the gold dust we need to sift out of the polite exchanges.

Alec Guinness is perfect as George Smiley. Slow and methodical and illustrating GS's quirks and mannerisms perfectly. Notice how often he takes off his glasses and wipes them clean. The rest of the cast performs admirably. On my first viewing, they had managed to hide some truly difficult dialogue (e.g. "Now, Young Mr. Guillam, are you happy in Brixton?" le Carre's weakness is realistic dialogue, for all his realism elsewhere) and turn them around into believable expressions of character.

Finally it seems the weather improved the production no end. Many of the scenes were filmed outdoors during the third coldest recorded winter since WWII. The actors were cold and were genuinely oppressed by particularly rotten English weather. This added to an already realistic production.

Highly highly recommended.

As far as the spy genre goes, the Cold War was the good ole days. Previous generations of spy thrillers from authors like Eric Ambler focused on the nefarious undertaking of spies from various Balkan countries and other corners of Europe, but with the onset of the nonshooting war between the West and the Soviet Union, the spy genre reached its zenith. Just before the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the ending of the Cold War, John LeCarre managed to perfect the spy novel in a series of great works. Two of these novels were brought together to produce two amazing television masterpieces: TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY and SMILEY'S PEOPLE. Smiley is the polar opposite of James Bond. Physically unattractive, elderly, unathletic, a cuckold many times over, not a master gunman, George Smiley nonetheless emerges as the quintessential master spy, with a razor sharp mind, always keeping his own counsel, and dissecting every situation with impeccable logic.

The success of the television adaptation was assured the second they recruited Alec Guinness to play George Smiley. The Smiley of the novels does not in most ways resemble Alec Guinness. Smiley is reported as resembling a frog, of always wearing expensive but ill fitting clothes, of being extremely fat, none of which is true of Guinness. But there is one way in which Guinness is perfect for the role, and which makes him a huge success in the series: Smiley is described by LeCarre as possessing a beautiful, sonorous, honey-like voice. It is no exaggeration to say that Guinness's voice dominates this series. Even if the series had done nothing else well, Guinness would have made the series a success.

Nonetheless, the production brought a great deal more to the table than Alec Guinness. The script is exceptional, and while it does not function on as high an artistic level as the novel (which is very well written indeed), it does preserve much of the complexity of the novel's plot. LeCarre makes the reader work, and understanding the novel TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY is not the simple exercise that reading Robert Ludlum or other spy novelists is. Frankly, I found it enormously refreshing to have to work hard at understanding a TV miniseries. The hardness is not superfluous, but central to the mood of the story. The complexity mirrors the moral complexity of the situation the characters find themselves in. The makers of the series could have simplified the plot, could have made everything that was happening clear from the outset, but it would have thereby distorted the story. The opening credits begin with a shot of those Russian dolls that open to reveal a still smaller doll inside. The story is one of layers beneath layers, like unpeeling an onion. The complexity of the narrative enhances this.

The cast is large and superb. Although Guinness is clearly the star, a host of superb actors like Ian Carmichael and Joss Acklund fill out one of the most talented casts in television history. A pre-STAR TREK Patrick Stewart has a small but crucial appearance as Smiley's arch nemesis Karla (he returns in SMILEY'S PEOPLE). On one level, not very much happens in TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY. Mainly there is a great deal of talk, but it is glorious talk, made all the better by the superb cast. But the best thing in the series remains the character of George Smiley and the host of contradictions he contains. One thrills at his mastery, especially near the end when he masterfully gathers together all the threads of the mystery and with utter ease overwhelms his opposition, and yet feels pity for him in the closing scenes, where he flutters around his wayward wife, the infamous Ann, as flustered as a schoolboy.

Luckily, the George Smiley saga did not end with this series, but continued in SMILEY'S PEOPLE, in which his struggle against his KGB opponent Karla is brought to a satisfying end.

Okay, I'll agree with the critics of "Tinker, Tailor." It's slow-moving, lacks action, the characters speak "English" which is hard for Americans to follow, and the story-line is confusing and obscure. Other than that it's my all-time favorite spy novel and the best mini-series ever put on TV. Well, except maybe for "Lonesome Dove."

To summarize, George Smiley, the anti-James Bond spy -- pathetic in love, bespectacled, old, and overweight -- detects a Russian "mole" in "the Circus" -- the British spy agency and sets out to find out who it is. Alec Guinness as Smiley gets more meaning with a raised eyebrow than most actors do with a Shakespeare soliloquy. The supporting cast is large and made up of faceless, but superb, BBC actors. The tenor is dark, dreary, and seedy -- again the opposite of James Bond.

The six one-hour parts of the mini-series allow plenty of time for the story to unfold and for the watcher to enjoy the little bits of acting, scenery, and growing tension along the way. You don't feel rushed watching TTSS -- but if you turn your head you'll miss something important. It helps to have read the novel beforehand; that cuts down on the suspense but helps you comprehend.

TTSS is not the end of the story. When you've digested these six hours you must proceed onward to watch the equally good "Smiley's People" which concludes Smiley's quest to hunt down "Karla," the fabled Russian spymaster. George Smiley may be the archtypal character of the Cold War and TTSS may go down in history as the best fiction written and filmed about this intense 45-year era. TTSS and "Smiley's People" are the anti-epics of the period.

Smallchief

Of all of fiction's spies, Smiley, the master of bureaucratic warfare, is the most believable. Casualties in the Cold War were few, at least in the rich countries. The Cold War was a shadow war largely fought by men like Smiley - grey, methodical and alert to any inconsistency, whose battlefields were the minutes of obscure committees and the cross-referencing of appointments to junior posts in trade missions in filthy third world provincial capitals.

It is this battle of the bureaucrats that is depicted in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and it is depicted with such biting accuracy that one forgets just how daring a screen play as lacking in action as this is. It is hard to imagine a television commissioning editor these days, especially in the BBC, going ahead with a series with an opening as somnolescently cryptic as this one - four men in suits enter a room, unannounced, undescribed, reading and smoking but saying nothing. There is no music or subtitle. After perhaps a minute, one of them says, "We are ready to begin." And so begins one of the most beautifully crafted series in television history.

This series, as said, doesn't major on action. The mystery is as complex and difficult to piece together as any good spy mystery, but the plot is fairly simple - Smiley must uncover the traitor before he does any more damage. What this series excels at is character and atmosphere - it evokes the 1970s wonderfully, a 1970s where Britain was managed into genteel decline by chain-smoking toffs in expensive suits who harked after the lost battles of an Empire they loathed and repined for at the same time. There are no two dimensional characters, no cardboard cutouts here - everyone is delightfully rounded, even the extras.

The Empire is all but forgotten now, as is the post-Imperial malaise which followed it; the tension in the British establishment between pro- and anti-Americans remains, but the Cold War has been replaced by new conflicts, more clear cut and without the shadow of the bomb. We are unlikely to find well-heeled Cambridge graduates from the dominant ethnic group running off to join al-Qa'eda these days.

The toffs haven't gone, but they have mutated - gone into camouflage. While continuing to send their children to the best schools, they have mockney demoticised their accents, swapped their suits for fleeces and banned smoking from their offices. This series beautifully evokes the Britain of the 1970s, in the silent period between the two social revolutions of the `60s and the `80s.

In general, the television series is very faithful to the book and all the better for it. It drifts off more at the end, and two of the last three scenes are the weakest of the series. That's not enough to ruin a brilliant series.

I haven't read the book. The film has relatively little action, consisting mostly of conversations. In that sense, it owes something to the Sherlock Holmes tradition of tracking down a mystery.

There is a "mole" in the "circus." The mole is working for the now-defunct USSR, at the height of the cold war. I'm still not sure what the circus is, but it is a division of British intelligence. George Smiley (Alec Guinness) was thrown out of his job at the circus, following the death of his mentor, Control, the head of the circus. Or should I call him the ringleader?

Now Smiley is called back into action to sniff out and expose the mole. He interviews a complex cast of characters, reviews secret files, and eventually sets a trap. As this unfolds over 6 hours, you will be drawn in by the performances, the possible solutions to the mystery, the utter believability and class with which this mini-series was made.

After seeing it once, I immediately wanted to watch it again. There is so much detail in the series, so many characters, you cannot possibly catch it all in the first viewing, unless you already read the book. It would be worth watching twice just for the note-perfect performances of the entire cast.

This was no Hollywood production. It was filmed in 16mm, and that's the only drawback to the DVD. It is grainy, and not especially clear. The DVD probably represents the print fairly well. I would have preferred that the company who mastered this DVD set had invested some effort in digitally cleaning up the video before releasing it. The visual quality is akin to what you might have seen in those old documentary movies in grade school if you're old enough to remember when they used to actually show films instead of videos.

The soundtrack is great for understanding the dialog. There is not much dynamic range, and the music is not impressively reproduced. It is what it is. It is adequate to the task, nothing more.

You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but the picture could have been cleaned up a little. It does not detract markedly from the immense pleasure of watching these ace actors performing a great script. But I'd have to give a final rating of...

Content 5 stars
Video/sound quality 3 stars

The first time I saw TINKER,TAILER, SOLDIER, SPY, it almost frightened me out of my wits. Of course when it aired on PBS the Cold War was on and the thought that spies were hidden in plain sight was terrifying. As a child growing up under the threat of Nuclear disaster in the days when we had `drills' and crawled under our desks, I thought the nightmare would never end. When Kim Philby was exposed as a traitor in the British Secret Spy Service everyone was asking `Who can we trust'. Philby had been recruited as a young student at Cambridge (I think), by a Communist who was his handler until he was exposed as a spy. I believe John Le Carré was inspired by this incident when he wrote his now famous books become tv thrillers.

The beauty of this film series is that the producers gave the plot time to develop, so if you watch it carefully you won't get lost even though the story is complex. Every detail of the context of London is lovingly portrayed and beautifully reflects the period which in the Philby case occurred. If you are an Anglophile, you will want to buy this series if for no other reason than to view it and engage in nostalgic reflection as it was shot before London was `overdeveloped' with towering modern office buildings.

The cast is stellar-Sir Alec Guinness as George Smily, British Secret Agent par excellent; Ian Richardson as Bill Haydon, Smiley's nemesis at the Circus and in bed with his wife Ann (Siàn Phillips); Ian Bannen as Jim Predeaux, betrayed British Agent; Patrick Stewart as Karla, Russian master spy; Bernard Hepton as the colorful Circus member-the unforgettable Hungarian `dandy" Toby Esterhase (MANSEFIELD PARK); and other familiar BBC faces. Sadly, many these actors are now gone.

I did not experience the same fear on rewatching this series as I had before, perhaps because I had seen it, but I also think it has to do with missing a worthy opponent. Le Carré humanized the communists and made the whole Cold War spy business dreadfully sad. Say what you will about the Communists, they never blew up huge office buildings in New York filled with civilians.

Where does one start when commenting on the top echelon of film making? How about starting with the principal of this film, Sir Alec Guinness?

Honestly, cinema does not get any better than this. John Le Carre's excellent book is brought to real, gritty, desperate life by this BBC production. I've read the book (the first of Le Carre's I read, as a matter of fact), and I was curious to learn if the rich, dark, texture of the novel could be captured on film. Happily, it has been.

Loosely based upon the story of a real Soviet mole, Kim Philby, the film looks at spycraft as it must be; lots of partial information one tries to make sense of, hunches based upon a lifetime of working in the dark, engaged in a war of sorts, mainly cold, but occasionally very, very hot.

Guinness is George Smiley, one of the most famous names in fictional spycraft literature. His nemesis is Karla (played by a pre-Star Trek Patrick Stewart), a Soviet spy who almost matches Smiley step for step. Smiley is a retired British agent, who is asked to return to help ferret out a Soviet mole in the British secret service.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy takes you into the world of the game as it is really played (or one imagines it as such). Who do you trust? Who is on your side? Who is willing to compromise to get ahead in the bureaucracy, and who is willing to sell his country out completely? The rewards are few and fleeting, the costs heavy and sometimes overwhelming, but the game must be played for one's country, for one's duty. One perseveres and muddles on.

Full of surprises, excellent acting, great settings, and heavy on atmosphere, this is as good as it gets. Others have said that it is a bit too full of twists and turns to easily follow. Having some familiarity with the book, I didn't find it so. However, even if that is true, then just watch it again! I've seen it several times, and, as any work of art, it is full of layers and details that will reveal themselves with subsequent viewing.

MOST HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! Any chance that one has of watching a master at work, Guinness is a joy, but watch this master at the top of his craft, in a film worthy of such a performance. (BTW, the American version is 26 minutes shorter than the British version. I'm not sure what's been cut, but it seems a shame to cut a second from such a film!)

As other reviews have stated this is a tightly scripted, reasonably true to Le Carre's original, cold war, spy thriller. That said, it is also so much more than that. Even if you are not usually one to be impressed by filmic attempts to capture books (as in the book is always better!), attempts to film Le Carre's books authentically, mini-series, attempts to tell spy/cold-war stories w/o lots of booms and blood you should give this set a try. The characters are real, the camera work is of the stuff to be a textbook, the directing is superbe and the editing is of the highest standard. The DVD itself is an improvement over the VHS version but this is broadcast TV and in 4:3. Still there is almost NOTHING to criticise here (unless you've just GOT to have the noise and gore!). Yes it is 324 minutes long but each episode is so well done you can literally watch them out of order and they each make a great evening's viewing. What other mini-series can that be said of? Among the best the the BBC have done and they usually get this type of stuff as well as anyone. An excellent choice for discussion groups, film students, etc, etc. Can I come up with a real criticism? Well the box is dull and there's no directors blather or such but this is among the best you can get for the full price. At a discount it almost makes one feel guilty. What a wonderful study piece for any aspiring actor, director, editor, or just blokes like me who like to pretend we're British every now and then. Buy this one!

There are so many excellent reviews here that relate the story that I won't bother to repeat what has already been said. I am not a fan of spy stories and I usually get so lost in the plot that I lose interest. This one is so well done, though, that I managed to plow through until I finally figured out who was who and what was going on. I did rewind once to help myself. I mention this so that like minded folks, maybe female, will not shrink from the effort it takes in the beginning to make sense of this tale. It is well worth it!

As everyone else has written, the cast is superb, with special mention of the incomparable Alec Guiness. I'm sure that it was Guiness' presence that captured me and enabled me to labor through my initial confusion. Just watching his face--the subtle changes as he listens to the words of others is a great treat. Not only is he brilliant, though, he is dear! There's something terrilbly lovable about George Smiley as played by Guiness. One can only wonder what another actor would have made of the part.

As usual the BBC has done an amazing job. It's odd to think that this period in our history, which most readers here will well remember, is already so far in the past. I'll leave ruminations on that fact to others. I just want to add my voice here to those who have praised this superior production.