Watching grass grow

Rating: Null/10 (25 October 2013)

I'm a bit amazed to see that so many people seem to really like this movie. To me it is just a more-than-pretentious, rather pompous fake and fails completely on nearly every level.
Now, I am fully aware that le Carré novels tend to be far more realistic and, thus, slow-paced than, say, James Bond movies. Nevertheless, the pacing of this film was so abominably slow that I had the feeling I was watching grass grow until it finally came to an end after long, long,...VERY LONG two hours plus. What really annoyed me all the time, though, was the filmmakers' meticulous obsession with the retro-style look of the whole film. They should have really paid a bit more attention to the on-screen story-telling (preventing the audience from falling asleep) than just celebrating the 70's look of every scene (starting from the hairdressing to clothing, dull 70's housing and cars, etc.).
In one scene you witness an insect flying in the back of a stylish Citroen DS (why?), in another - key - scene an aircraft is landing in the background and menacingly approaching the characters in the foreground (why??); in one of the (luckily deleted) scenes featured on the DVD you can watch Gary Oldman preparing and enjoying a fried egg for (I guess) some two minutes (why???).
This is, as I mentioned above, extremely pretentious, artsy movie-making. If it weren't for some of the good actors, some of the nice camera work and Alberto Iglesias's decent score, I would say: Simply forget it and READ le Carré instead.