Fantastic slow-burning future classic

Rating: Null/10 (22 September 2011)

From its slow, languid, unfussy titles through to its half focused final shot Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is an exercise in classy film making. It possesses perfect period feel and the best cast of the year all delivering a masterclass in film acting.
This is a slow burning story, played out predominantly in stuffy, over bright rooms laced with smoke and questionable decor. It is a game played across countries, by arrogant men with questionable morals and poor manners, deciding the fate of men and women in order to get what they all want: Treasure.
With MI6 still reeling from the exposure of the Cambridge spies, shut out from the American Intelligence sources and desperate for a win in the game. Control (John Hurt), convinced of a Soviet spy in the intelligence service, is losing respect of his younger division heads. When an operation in Bucharest, known only to the highest echelons of the Service, is disrupted by the Russians, Control's enemies seize their opportunity and force the old man and his confidante, George Smiley (Gary Oldman) out. Now an outsider, Smiley is the perfect person to investigate on behalf of a suspicious bureaucrat (Simon McBurney) who begins to think that there may be something in Control's paranoid theories after all.
As so the plot goes, twisting and turning, the pieces slowly coming together in the mind of Gary Oldman's Smiley. A quiet man, not into grandstanding like his contemporaries, instead he quietly and methodically collects information, building up the story. How do we know this? It's written on Oldman's face. Smiley is not a showy role, it demands subtlety from its actor. Oldman is not the first choice, given his scenery chewing roles in Fifth Element or Leon, but he is simply magnificent. In every twitch of his mouth, or long stare into the middle distance, a little something more is revealed about Smiley. What he thinks, what he needs, what he wants. It's all written there on his tired, unsmiling face.
This is not a spy story for the Bourne generation, it's closer to a genre thought long dead - the true cold war thriller like The Conversation, though I kept being reminded of The Odessa Steps or Day of the Jackal. Its pacing is perfect throughout, similar to The Wire in it's slow unraveling of a story told through a lot of disparate characters and from a lot of different viewpoints.
That's not to say there isn't drama or tension here, it's just a very different sort of drama. The most tense moment involves the theft of some papers from a cupboard. It doesn't sound like much, but it is a gripping sequence, full of fear and paranoia.
We've mentioned Oldman, who must be in for an Oscar nomination, but the rest of the cast are all superb, with Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hardy especially impressive.
Huge kudos to the production department for their recreation of early 70's London and all the grimness that entails. From Smiley's glasses (actually sourced by Oldman himself) to the awful Christmas party held by the Circus staff which, as a flashback, anchors much of the plot the detailing is perfect, especially when shot through the roving long lenses of director Tomas Alfredson.
For all the sumptuous detail, consummate acting and magnificent pacing, something had to give, and unfortunately the final reveal of the mole is not the sickening gut punch it should have been. "It was him, of course it was him." It's a problem with this being a film, there isn't enough time to give all of the characters equal attention, keep that ambiguity going to the end.
But this is a very minor quibble in two plus hours of sumptuous high quality mature entertainment. Perhaps my face resembled that of Smiley's at the end, as the montage of the winners and losers flows by, as he's finished putting the case to bed, as the betrayed come to terms with their situation. Smiley's plain features show the faintest ghost of satisfaction, of a man pleased with his work, and of a game well played.