Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011)

I am a viewer who is rarely troubled by a film's story being confusing. If I don't understand the windings of a plot, I easily settle with the thought that the idea is not to "understand" in the sense of getting a perspicuous representation of what is going on. This may of course make me patient with the seemingly random turns of some narartives, but other times, I am unnecessarily lazy. I don't know what to think about the myriad events that make up the mysterious Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I can't say I was engaged by it on the level of "solving a puzzle" - even though the film clearly required an attentive viewer with an interest in comprehending the story - but for me, it was not the "complicatedness" that made this an outstanding film. However, I do think that this is a film that benefits from a second viewing. Alfredsson and his crew groove on details, and it takes time to pay attention to all of that. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is NOT James Bond (confession: I haven't seen any James Bond film whatsoever.) It's a slow-paced, detailed drama about human relations and institutions during the heat of the cold war.

I was worried I would be bored by this drab, European spy movie (based on a novel by le Carré), only to be surprised how intrigued I was by this cold and clinical film. Tomas Alfredsson directed the film and he made a glorious job creating the anonymous settings of the film. The whole thing is brilliantly enigmatic, from the characters, to the locations and the cinematography (sometimes a grainy quality of the images conjures up the sense of absolute clandestince presence). It may be mad to say this, but Tinker... was a pleasure to watch.

The story revolves around the betrayals stemming from an event in which an English spy in Hungary tries to track down a mole. In the sinewy narrative unraveling, we are introduced to a group of English Intelligence service officers (and ex-spies) who all look on each other with a suspicous eye. The tension of the film: spies spying on spies and the notion of "being on our side" becomes very unclear. Through flash-backs and one of the main character's investigation work, the mystery of the mole is gradually resolved. The world Alfredsson creates is one of paranoia, betrayed love and super-secret dealings.  

I am convinced that the film would have been a completely conventional affair, had Alfredsson opted for a more straightforward presentation of the story, or had he chosen to make a "thriller" instead of the present low-key drama. The merits of Tinker..., tackling a difficult theme in a completely innovative way, could be compared to Sorrentino's Il divo, even though Alfredsson's movie is far less lavish. In both films, the director makes the character a part of the locations, and the locations express the characters. This is a useful dialectic form.

The actors are mostly great (with some embarrassing exceptions). Gary Oldman is GREAT.