Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Gary Oldman has earned such a
reputation for his explosive, scenery-chewing career that when the
now-53-year-old actor quiets down and turns inward, critics herald his
performance as revelatory. But while his poised approach to George Smiley in Tinker,
Tailor, Soldier, Spy may seem like a tour de force of restraint, one only
has to consider his turns as Commissioner Gordon in The Dark Knight or
Sirius Black in the Harry Potter films to see that the British actor has
more than bombast up his sleeve. Contextually, the roles couldn’t be further
apart, but Oldman brings a stoic sense of watchful melancholy and tired decency
to each, portraying men who may be physically past their prime but who are
smart and talented enough to remain in the game. He expertly exploits the
subtle wrinkles and tics in his ever-expressive face to deliver deceptively
intimate performances.

In this efficiently condensed
adaptation of John le Carré’s seminal spy novel, directed by Tomas Alfredson (Let
the Right One In), Oldham slips into and gets under the skin of the aging
and inscrutable Smiley, an agent who’s been brought out of forced retirement to
help MI6 (sardonically dubbed the “circus” by those on the inside) uncover a
Russian mole. Smiley’s old boss, known only as “Control” (John Heard), has
died, leaving behind a list of code-named suspects (thus the title). Smiley
even finds himself on the list, a fact that doesn’t surprise him in the least.
The world of espionage brings with it an endless cycle of distrust. Still,
Smiley has a relationship with each of the suspects, and must enlist a nervous
but loyal young agent (Sherlock‘s Benedict Cumberbatch) to help him root
out the culprit. From Hungarian defectors to Soviet double agents to internal
rivalries and failed relationships, Smiley untangles an incestuous skein of
egos, operations and deceptions, and discovers that even he has a tragically
personal blind spot.

Alfredson’s
icy and austere direction brings an effective detachment to le Carré’s Cold War
plot. His meticulous, no-affect approach is perfectly suited to capturing the
isolating atmosphere and moral murkiness that permeates Smiley’s world.
Unfortunately, as drama, Tinker struggles to make an impact. The search
for a Soviet mole is, ostensibly, a whodunnit, but Alfredson and his
screenwriters (Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan) do little to engage us in
the hunt. The final revelation (which is hardly a surprise) comes almost as an
afterthought. The characters and tone are compelling but, aside from a tense
scene where Cumberbatch must swipe documents under the noses of his superiors,
the movie generates few actual thrills.

Tinker is far better as a slow-burning study in blank-faced
paranoia. Upright and uptight, the British spy community is depicted as sad and
lonely, filled with despairing individuals who have sacrificed their personal
lives for the alienating obsessions of their profession. It’s a surprisingly
humane portrait of people who regularly engage in acts of inhumanity. Their
sallow complexions and drab, claustrophobic surroundings only underline the casual
amorality that has permeated their lives. From the movie’s opening scene — a
failed mission that leaves a nursing mother dead and an agent (Mark Strong)
shot in the back — it’s clear that emotion and regret are luxuries that have no
place in a world infected by deceit, corruption and subterfuge. For all
Smiley’s understated savvy and smarts, his is a life marked by illusory
relationships, shifting ethics, and an endless cycle of zero-sum plotting and
counterplotting.

Alfredson
finds small opportunities to ironically comment on the grim absurdity of the
spook’s existence — the best of which is a flashback to a depressing company
Christmas party. Crowded into MI6’s functionally cluttered office space,
workmates and spouses desperately and drunkenly cheer the holidays even as they
betray their marriages, and, as the future reveals, each other.

Disappointment
and distrust become the foundation for every interaction in Tinker and
it’s hard not to connect the tired corruption that defined the espionage efforts
of the 1970s to the political cynicism and dysfunction of today. Alfredson
makes clear that the wages of sin are indeed death, if not of the body then
certainly of the soul. —Jeff Meyers

This article appears in Jan 4-10, 2012.