Tinker Tailor Soldier Film Critic

Last night Andrea came over, and we settled down to the serious business of watching the film version of ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.’  The one that everybody went ‘oooh!’ about last year.  The one with Gary Oldman, and Benedict Cumberbatch, and Ciaran Hinds, and Colin Firth, and Mark Strong, and everyone in the world in.

The one based on the novel by John Le Carre.

The one previously televised by the BBC starring Alec Guinness.

That one.

We have been wanting to see it since it was in cinemas.  Andrea is a huge fan due to Radio Four having serialised all the Smiley books last year, with Simon Russell Beale as Smiley.

I am just a huge fan of anything with Colin Firth in it.

I could cheerfully watch cat food adverts if Colin was the one shaking the biscuits in the bowl.

We didn’t go to the cinema, because, well, we rarely go to the cinema any more. Firstly there is the question of price.  Secondly there is the question of audience.  It doesn’t seem too bad to me, to spend the thick end of twenty quid on a theatre ticket when what you are seeing is live and unrepeatable, and the audience mostly refrains from behaving like they are still in their front room with their pyjamas on.

It seems absolutely outrageous to spend the same amount of money when the film projectionist just has to press a button to work the film, and the audience seem to spend their time chewing their way through loft insulation whilst coughing up the odd lung and texting all their friends.

It is, to say the very least, irksome.

We used to go to the local arts cinema a fair bit if we were really, really desperate to see something, but even that started to be invaded by the popcorn munching, scrofulous bronchitics, who couldn’t sit through ten minutes of a film without feeling the need to broadcast their opinion to their nearest and dearest via the power of telephonic technology.

I do not understand why people cannot just put down their phones for a while. It’s baffling to me.  If whatever it is you are watching, or doing, is so absorbing and great, why would you want to take your eyes off it for a moment so you can text Shaznay to say ‘its gr8 LOL’.

Gah!

Anyway, last night we did not have to worry about any of that, as we were watching it in my living room, where there are no people we wish to shoot, or push face down into a box of popcorn until they stop breathing.

And you can drink tea, eat cake and snuggle under a blanket, none of which you can do at the cinema with any ease at all.

It helps that Jason insists we have a television that is so large that it can be seen from space with the naked eye.  When your telly is that big, you don’t really miss anything about the cinematic experience.

The only things I hanker after are the things they don’t really do any more anyway.  The old Pearl and Dean music for example:

And the adverts.  Like the Kia Ora ad, which played in our local flea pit for about five years forty billion times a week:

And the ones for the local restaurants and businesses that they simply can’t afford to make any more.  Which is a shame, because I think I loved those the best. My particular favourite was for an Indian restaurant around the corner from the cinema, which promised untold foreign delights, all shot at bizarre angles, with wobbly voices and wobbly heads, showing half terrified couples with Farrah Fawcett hair do’s shovelling lamb bhuna into their mouths while trying to look alluring and mysterious.

Bring back amateur ads that’s what I say. Give up on the sophistication. It’s so 1990′s.  Let’s go retro.

I suppose I should really talk about the film now shouldn’t I?

Firstly, I was totally surprised that I understood it all.  Word on the street is that the film is very confusing.  It may be, but not to me.  This means either that I got it completely wrong (like the time my aunt filled in the entire cryptic Telegraph crossword, only to find the next day that she hadn’t answered a single question correctly), or that I have spent far too much of my life reading and watching crime/spy stuff.

I was expecting it to be The Usual Suspects, which I had to watch twice to understand.

But no. It seemed reasonably straightforward to me.

I will not go into the ins and outs of the plot for fear of giving something crucial away that might spoil your enjoyment.  It’s all about keeping you in suspenders (as my granny used to say).

I will say that it is a very slow film.  If you’re thinking Beverley Hills Cop style speed and action, you will be sorely disappointed.  The words ponderous and lugubrious spring to mind.  You really need to be patient with it.

The cast is uniformly strong. Oldman’s performance is good, and I can see why he is winning prizes, but as Jason said: ‘I hope he’s not being paid by the word.’  It’s more about smouldering intent and a Poirotesque insistence on working out the little grey cells.  When he did speak he made me think that he had spent far too much time studying Alec Guinness’s performance.  I kept hoping he would say: ‘These are not the spies you’re looking for.’

Sadly he did not.

The look and feel of the film was perfect.  It reminded me why the Seventies is a time I would rather forget.  It was a feast of brown, with smears of grey and khaki and a great deal of moulded plastic.  Everything looked like it had come from the Eastern bloc countries, including London.  Everything was dark and smoky, and sometimes there were alarming patches of that hideous burnt orange colour, which haunts my dreams of childhood, and which mercifully seems to have fallen out of fashion.  Hopefully never to return.

All in all, I enjoyed the film. It was pretty perfect in its evocation of a time, and in recreating the paranoia that the Cold War created.  It was not though, terribly exciting. There is the slow burn, and there is the damn, I’ve let the fire go out, and I think the fire went out eventually.