...the texture of wool felt, grey and grainy.

Rating: 6/10 (31 May 2015)

Rated 7 out of 10 When I look at Tinker Tailor, I get the sensation of touching and feeling the texture of wool felt, grey and grainy. The film has never feared of keeping the audience waiting. It's like waiting in a restaurant, hoping the waiter carrying your order might come up at any second, and the only thing you could do is listening to the music running through the restaurant's speaker. In this case, Alberto Iglesias's excellent scores would immediately place you in a rather apathetic atmosphere of the cold war era. The whole film is mainly about how George Smiley (Gary Oldman) uncovers the identity of the mole inside the top of the Circus, the British Intelligence Service. The film never intends to surprise you, as what the old man in the film Sleeping Beauty (Australia) says, the great truths are often unsurprising. Thus throughout the film, you will rarely feel extremely intense, but the film creates something grasping that makes you unable to leave it aside. It's always puzzling for me to understand how these characters manage to seek the underlying facts from the minimal evidence. And that is probably why I failed to catch up with the story the first time I watched it. So don't worry if you feel the same while watching it, watch it again. However, that might be one of the things that this film fails to accomplish, to guide the audience through the process of unraveling of the mystery. I don't think a film that fails to let the audience understand the surface reality of it is worth applauding, but I have to admit the beauty of the images of this film has absolutely overshadowed this. This film applies a number of close-ups. Therefore, most characters' faces and emotions are all under the audience's monitoring, which makes it looks like if all of the characters have nowhere to hide. In the scene which Smiley tries to replicate the exact actions and words he used in his encounter with Karla, the leader of Russian Intelligence, to Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch), Oldman stares right into the camera, and then into the audience's eyes; you can see all the subtle changes of Smiley's face while he's talking and it's as if you're Karla, and he is speaking to you. Smiley is no wonder the protagonist of the film. Different from Bourne or Bond, Smiley rarely makes a sound or ever shows emotions; he is almost as cool as the color of his hair----silver; he is not the one that you'll look twice if seen on the street, but through his thick spectacles and distinctive accent, you can instantly realize this is Smiley. To me, Oldman's performance of Smiley is absolutely true to the original novel, written by John Le Carre, but on the other hand, a bit overly pretentious. Oldman's Smiley is conspicuously different from all other characters, which are exposed of their greed and cowardice; he's almost detached from the world he is in. But that might be exactly what the film wants Smiley to be, to stand out, to be silent but appealing. Besides Oldman, the whole cast gives a convincing and compelling performance, including Colin Firth, John Hurt, Ciaran Hinds, Toby Jones, Tom Hardy, Mark Strong, David Dencik, and Kathy Burke as the officers of the Circus. One of the smart things that the film does is to eliminate Lady Ann Sercombe's face. We can only see Ann's back, her blurred figure, or her figure in dark in the whole film. If you have seen the film or read the George Smiley Series written by Le Carre, you would learn that Ann has a complicated relationship with Smiley throughout the storyline. I'm often curious of how Smiley feels about this. One of the scenes that I feel is quite symbolic (which means I think there's something more than it but I have no idea) is the scene in which Guillam is driving Mendel and Smiley to Hotel Islay and a bee comes into the interior of the car. Guillam is quite annoyed by the bee. Smiley notices the bee, then rolls down the window, lets the bee out. Maybe if you have any opinion of what this scene symbolizes, you should contact me. Tinker Tailor is inundated with natural sounds but lacks human voices. You can hear Control (John Hurt) sitting down, the sound of the chair moving and Control landing on the chair; you can also hear the clicking sound between the coffee cup and the plate knowing the Hungarian waiter's hands are shaking nervously. The magnification of the sounds actually produces a subtle but significant sense of tension for the audience. You can imagine what it would feel like if you could hear the leaves rubbing against each other in the wind, people mumbling words, sweat dropping to the ground all of this, continuously, endlessly; it must be excruciating. I have heard that listening to the sound of water drop is one of the ways of torturing people. This is the time when I hesitate again if we should call all films 'entertainment'. Tinker Tailor is not an 'everyone's film'. I would not say that Tinker Tailor is entertaining but is quite well-planned, enigmatic and thought-provoking. I do not intend to recommend this film to you or to discourage you to watch this film, it is up to you, if you ever want to see (*spoiler alert) Bill Haydon being shot by Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong) with Le Mar in the back ground.