![]() ![]() The irony of this is that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy surrounds Smiley with peers. ![]() He carries a grim knowledge he cannot share and that has thus left him desperately alone. Once described by le Carré as a “breathtakingly ordinary” man, Oldman plays Smiley as the anti-Bond, the spymaster as an elder statesman, whose career in espionage has saddled him with only a sense of weary disillusionment. Held against the bare-knuckle, high-octane 007 pictures toplined by Daniel Craig, Alfredson's adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy invigorated the final days of 2011, a breath of cold air on a January morning. ![]() The film’s screenplay, which was nominated for an Oscar, holds up a decade later as a masterclass in adaptation by Peter Straughan and Bridget O’Connor, condensing le Carré’s labyrinthine setting and the coiled interiors of his characters into an absorbing two-hour film that moves with precision and purpose. In adapting Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Alfredson and his team sought to preserve the gnomically dense nature of the story. Smiley is determined to uncover the identity of a Soviet mole in the upper echelons of British intelligence, a shadow realm colloquially known as “The Circus.” Set in the early 1970s, in a dire London where smoke hangs in the air like a veil, it follows semi-retired intelligence officer George Smiley (Gary Oldman). It is a sharp, sophisticated feature, a puzzle of confusion and paranoia. This description suits Alfredson’s adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy exactly. Le Carré's novels recall ornate timepieces, their brushed metal exteriors concealing an array of whirring intersecting parts, which tick relentlessly forward whether you understand each of their functions or not. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE SCI-FI MOVIE? Tell us now for a chance to get paid to write an article for Inverse.Ī scene from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It’s streaming on HBO Max until January 31 and receives a new 4K restoration from StudioCanal in February. But perhaps the greatest adaptation of his tightly wound, spectrally atmospheric style - at least, the one that’s come closest to capturing the experience of reading le Carré - came as recently as 2011, in Tomas Alfredson’s marvelously meticulous Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Many of them instant bestsellers, le Carré’s spy novels have captivated filmmakers in the half-century since they were published. It remains one of le Carré’s best-known works and was promptly adapted for television, with Alec Guinness playing George Smiley for the BBC in 1979. The events informed Tinker’s story of a mole hunt in Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service. ![]() Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was published in 1974 after le Carré’s career in espionage is believed to have come to a close - hastened by the betrayal of British agents’ covers to the KGB by double agent Kim Philby. His early bestsellers, including 1963’s The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, were gray fiction for a gray world. The author’s stories told of secret agents, backroom interrogations, wire-taps, and break-ins, and they depicted cloak-and-dagger intrigue with blinding clarity. His precise, elegant prose, disavowing adjectives in favor of substantive verbs, reflected his time writing intelligence reports. Le Carré was born David Cornwell and adopted his famous pseudonym to publish his early novels - including 1961’s Call for the Dead, which introduced his signature character in bespectacled George Smiley - while still working for the government. ![]()
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