the saddest circus you’ll ever see.
a seasoned agent lured from retirement to unveil a hidden traitor doesn’t necessarily read like the set-up for cold, existential drama but such was the heart of john le carre’s lauded spy novel tinker tailor soldier spy; the grandfather to swedish helmsman tomas alfredson’s latest cinematic adaptation of chilly austerity. while gary oldman’s reticent george smiley was always the clear protagonist, and most frequently examined of alfredson’s picture, he’s more the centerpiece to a collective portrait of men in crisis, with treason being only one particular demon of their circle.
oldman’s restrained, internally-processed lead turn was brilliant enough to finally tilt academy heads into a belated nod for one of the generation’s best character actors, yet as much as his masterfully nuanced performance is the weary soul of alfredson’s film, the acting here is uniformly exceptional across the board. every notable supporting player delivers; communally writhing in their own silent agonies, perpetually evaded by their personal ghosts. for smiley, both his wayward wife and russian spy counterpart seem to exist as looming forces of memory that have always alluded him, the faceless entities he could never expose.
it’s certainly a ruminative, slow-burning character study, but one that never loses sight of its thriller foundations. alfredson exudes a cool patience with each flashback or character arc, but even at its most ponderous; every room, face or exchange is ripe with detail. the film’s most tense moments — eg. the opening shooting or cumberbatch’s taut file-snatch — are superlatively executed sequences in their own right, but alfredson never interrupts a calibrated, mournful atmosphere filtering its way through every crisply-shot frame. just like his sterling let the right one in, it’s atmospherics that alfredson bears a canny precision with.
aside from bringing a much-needed emotional closure, the inevitable reveal never quite satisfies in the gasp-inducing manner you’d suspect it might — but mystery-solving isn’t quite the point of the exercise. as much as the pensive, intelligent genre picture so brilliantly executed is a striking excavation of man at war, while acknowledging the slippery nature of that very definition. that taut, knife-edge tension never just lasts the moment, but is embedded into the very creases of the psyche, and those who aren’t reduced to wrecks, rats or deluded idealists must find a way to cloak the pain; a fatally-flawed human being behind every great spy. that it takes a particular type of person to delve into the anxiety of espionage is no new notion, but rarely is the coldness of this bitter conflict’s namesake so palpably evoked onscreen.
trailer here.
