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TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY (1979)
By: agate Date: March 20, 2015, 11:19 am
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TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY (1979)
This TV adaptation of a John LeCarré story was first shown in
1979, and that is approximately when I first saw it. I've
recently revisited it, partly to see what it was about it that I
liked, or whether I'd remembered it right. As I watched it this
second time, I realized that my first viewing had been in black
and white–quite a different experience from color, in this case.
Alec Guinness’s performance as George Smiley, former head of the
“Circus” (British Secret Intelligence Service), is stunning.
According to the movie critic Roger Ebert,
[quote]In the real world, where his real name is David Cornwall,
[LeCarré] was one of the British spies who was betrayed by Kim
Philby, the notorious MI6 operative who was a double agent for
the Soviets.[/quote]
With that information and a bit more at hand, I can say that
this story is a fictional version of some of Cornwall/LeCarré’s
experiences in connection with the exposure of a mole in MI6,
probably here known as the Circus.
Spy stories usually bore me because their plots are too
intricate to follow. Or, rather, I lose interest in following
them. But this story is an exception. It touches on the
rottenness at the roots of the whole espionage system.
And it is very elegantly presented, with each of the six
episodes framed by somber music introducing and closing them.
The opening involves a starkly simple photo of a matryoshka or
nesting Russian doll. This seems to be a typical matryoshka–a
woman’s figure, and each nesting doll as we come to it is
identical in appearance except that of course it is smaller. The
last one, however, which lacks facial features. It has been left
blank, almost as if it is up to the viewers to insert them. Or
to imagine them.
Smiley is the most enigmatic and hard-to-decipher of the
"operatives" who are at the center of this story. In the end it
is Smiley who “wins” even though we sense that his life is often
in danger during the course of the action. We want Smiley to
win, for there is about him a decency that the others often
lack.
Then there is the concluding part of each of the six
episodes–harder to account for: a choirboy’s singing of a
liturgical piece. I wondered all along what it was doing there
since none of the characters is devout, and religion isn’t
mentioned.
Or is it? Jim Prideaux, who was very nearly killed during an
action that went bad in Czechoslovakia, is told to “get lost”
and is eventually found, coaching at a boys’ school. He may be
about to lose his job, and he has been made lame by the injuries
he suffered at the time of the incident, but he is still the
honorable agent even though he apparently broke under
interrogation by the Soviets.
When this is revealed to George Smiley, he seems to understand.
It becomes clear that a “good” spy is one who values human life.
Contrasted with the enemy’s way of operating, which is to insist
ruthlessly that the end justifies the means and that life is
therefore cheap, expendable, the honorable British spy may be
fighting a losing battle, but will go on fighting nonetheless.
This is not a classic good versus evil tale, or at least that’s
not how I see it. Two political systems are pitted against each
other–the capitalist system of Britain and the communist
ideology of the Soviet bloc–but LeCarré is far from simplistic
about this opposition. He sees the decay that is at the root of
much of British tradition. He suggests (strongly) that the
time-honored convention of sending upper-class boys to all-boy
schools promotes an old-boy network rife with favoritism and
homosexual attachments that aren't always benign.
Backing this school system up, of course, is the Church of
England, with compulsory chapel for the boys, who are
indoctrinated with the impressive, possibly overwhelming (to an
impressionable child) Anglican aesthetic. For sensitive boys who
want to believe in the fundamental improving qualities of the
Christian ethos, such as the boy who attaches himself to
Prideaux, their lives will be molded forever by this schooling.
In a scene near the end, this boy is reading from Scripture and
stumbles over the old verb form “shewed,”and Prideaux, who by
now is probably aware that his temporary job as coach is about
to crumble, nevertheless gives him the needed information so
that he can proceed.
Prideaux has done the honorable thing, the properly British
thing. This is what LeCarré seems to be saying in this entire
story: There are (or were) still those in the intelligence
service trying to do their job responsibly and honorably, and
then there were those corrupt operatives, who would cynically
sell out.
It’s a very somberly patriotic story, worth watching for
Guinness’s acting if for no other reason. Our final glimpse of
him is a masterpiece of understatement, and sums up Smiley as we
have known him in this story: withholding judgment, willing to
hear people out, unemotional but not coldly so.
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