glimpse of the old times, spies are ordinary people who do unordinary work

Rating: 9/10 (18 January 2012)

It's a sort of endeavor to write a film review for Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy after its premiere month ago. The espionage masterpiece of John le Carré has already got enough comments and analysis, so when it was brought to the wide screen in 2011, I guess most people might be thinking, this film is good.
Of course, you cannot imagine a film "not good" with Gary Oldman (see Prada show this year?), John Hurt, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hardy... And this film is absolutely loyal to the novel, which perhaps is partly because le Carré himself is one of the adapters. We could see a real Circus in the 1960s - 1970s (The Honourable Schoolboy took place in 1976), with a gloomy London sky high above. All the buildings, streets, cars, pedestrians and rains seems clear and gray, and among them, is a group of tired spies.
"Tired" is the word I'd like use to describe the characters. Those who had been struggled through WWII and lived to the Cold War were easy find themselves confused and tired in the post-war circumstance- it seemed that an old enemy had been beaten nevertheless a new one was created from an old ally. Toby Esterharse and Percy Alleinne were nothing like what the "old", "decent" espionage. They were more like political clowns performing before the politicians. Meanwhile those who'd joined the Circus before or during the war, seemed to arrive at the crossroad of their life- either to drop out or to work for the superior they were not very approved of.
I am not to discuss the matter of belief and loyalty in that period of history as absurd as singing Soviet Union national anthem in the Christmas party of Circus here, just try to recall the life of spies of an ordinary human being. They were just normal people, despite their brain and profession, nothing more than an elder man abandoned by his wife who had affair with his colleague or a middle-aged public servant who had to be separated from his gay lover, or a young man who met his passion of love and began to dream about family on a business trip to Istanbul. When we look deeper, to reveal the truth beneath loyalty and betray, we might be able to see a group of ordinary people feeling confused about their life and what had long been making up the most part of it.
When the talented Connie Sachs sat next by George Smiley on a typical Oxford afternoon showing the latter photos from the past, she said what good old times, with a younger Control in uniform fighting for his country and what he believed in, and Jim Prideaux and Bill Haydon together for their friendship, who would had foreseen the lonely death of an old man and betray between two very good friends?
With the melody of La Mer, we could see Smiley sitting on Control's seat, Ann coming home again, Guillam passing by Smiley in the Circus, and Haydon shot by Prideaux then a tear of blood dropping from his face. Seems another period of good time had began, if we don' t consider what was going to happen.