Not understandable without prior knowledge

Rating: 4/10 (29 January 2012)

I used to think playing with your phone during social events was the height of rudeness. What a bleak epiphany, then, to watch this movie in good company and not be able to resort to any means of alleviating my extreme boredom and confusion.
I have no in-depth knowledge of British espionage circa 1973, and this plodding movie sure didn't help with that. I was never clear on what exactly was going on. I was never sure whether I was seeing a flashback or not. I never could work out who was more suspicious at any particular moment. I watched it with two friends, carefully and intently, and at the end we were, still, individually and jointly, unclear on what exactly had happened and why. Even the official synopsis was but a dim light to cast among such shadows.
It's entirely possible the experience will be wholly different if you've read the book or seen a previous adaptation. Perhaps also if you re-watch this movie, again and again. I couldn't say, as the unintelligible storyline coupled with the drab, bleak, saddening setting (which, to be fair, was the goal) moved me to antipathy. It's not easy for a boring movie to induce antipathy, but this one did.
It's incredibly frustrating to watch such a stellar cast in such an uninspiring production.
Any work of art requires a certain background to be appreciated. To all those who were able to enjoy the movie, more power to you. Yet I would ask, when one is trying to tell a story, is it not one's duty to make oneself understood, rather than the audience's duty to try to understand them?