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Thread: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (Tomas Alfredson)

  1. #51
    Screenwriter Fezzik's Avatar
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    I found this disappointing. Not that it was bad, but I was looking forward to it so much that I think i was expecting too much.

    It was very deliberate in its pace and drier than a good martini. It was almost interminable until Hardy showed up at Oldman's house. After that the pace improved.

    Still, the performances were great so it was worth seeing, but thats really all I can say about it.

  2. #52
    Montage, s'il vous plait? Raiders's Avatar
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    I thought this was incredible. I was stunned leaving the theater. I don't think it is bloodless at all. The film is pulsating with the menace that comes from the starkness of the Circus interiors and the way everything is kept at a distance, through a glass and the whole puzzle is scarcely ever seen. The entire film is obsessed with perception and viewing the world from behind a window; whether it be behind Smiley's glasses, Prideaux's loner student who simply observes, or through the wonderful motif of showing insidious packages being delivered by panning up through the floors of the Circus, distanced and safely behind a window pane of course. It is also a film obsessed with the male perspective and the impotence of the crushing enigma of the Circus. Despite many scenes suggesting or discussing something sexual in nature, there is no warmth or happiness and almost no women to speak of except for one who runs a female boarding school and in her own words is "seriously under-fucked." It's a tragic film, but not for any one character but rather the entire bloody system. I found the room where the "top men" sit to be sad and pitiable, a prison cell for their dim futures and ineffectual power struggles. The image of John Hurt's Control, slumped in a hospital bed is both heartbreaking and pathetic. Gary Oldman's soliloquy on his one, single meeting with his arch nemesis where he can recount all the little details his mind has obsessed over but have amounted to nothing and then, at the end of it all and in a moment of sad irony, he can't even recall his face. As said before, the impotence of these men with cheating wives, unrequited love and lovers forced to be abandoned, is wrenching. And on top of all this is Alfredson's impeccable direction, so fluid and smooth and catching just the right angles to show us the milieu without getting too personal or intimate with the details (except when he closes in on a character's face to highlight the futility or loss in their expression, especially when one is shot in the face and the blood slowly runs from his eye). I don't even need to speak to the performances, which are outstanding across the board.

    Stunning, just stunning.
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  3. #53
    Administrator Ezee E's Avatar
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    #1 of the year Raiders?

    Barbarian - ***
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  4. #54
    Montage, s'il vous plait? Raiders's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Ezee E (view post)
    #1 of the year Raiders?
    Easily.
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  5. #55
    Guttenbergian Pop Trash's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Raiders (view post)
    Easily.
    Have you made a 2011 top five/ten yet?
    Ratings on a 1-10 scale for your pleasure:

    Top Gun: Maverick - 8
    Top Gun - 7
    McCabe & Mrs. Miller - 8
    Crimes of the Future - 8
    Videodrome - 9
    Valley Girl - 8
    Summer of '42 - 7
    In the Line of Fire - 8
    Passenger 57 - 7
    Everything Everywhere All at Once - 6



  6. #56
    Montage, s'il vous plait? Raiders's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Pop Trash (view post)
    Have you made a 2011 top five/ten yet?
    Not sure. Probably not. I still have a couple key films to see.
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    The Counselor (2013) *½
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  7. #57
    i am the great went ledfloyd's Avatar
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    i wouldn't call it stunning, but i enjoyed it quite a bit. it is without doubt one of the best directed films of the year, on a purely visual level it's incredibly engaging. however, i do feel like many of the characters are merely sketches. for key players there isn't much behind cumberbatch or hinds. there is slightly more to toby jones character, but not by much. this wouldn't be such an issue if i cared about the plot, but i'm afraid i didn't. whenever flashbacks are triggered and it becomes weighed down with exposition it loses me a bit, and that happens a great deal.

    i kept coming back to zodiac while watching this. the sober attention to detail and settings are reminiscent of fincher's film. but i couldn't figure out why that film felt so vital in comparison to tinker tailors' stateliness. until i realized, zodiac was an incredibly funny film with well rounded characters, and this film's biggest weakness is it's lack of a sense of humor or humanism.

    which isn't to say i didn't like it. i would recommend it, for alfredson's direction if nothing else. but it also features an all-star cast of british thespians, and a rather good score by alberto iglesias that unfortunately seems to pop up less and less as the film proceeds.

  8. #58
    Montage, s'il vous plait? Raiders's Avatar
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    Isn't the lack of any real knowledge of these characters outside what we can explicitly observe, or rather even further, what they allow us to explicitly observe, kind of the entire point of the film? I also don't think there is anything wafer thin about Oldman's Smiley either. He's not dynamic in the sense we get to witness any great change or revelation, but from the context (the party flashbacks, his wife's distinct lack of appearance, his soliloquy, and finally the very final shot showing perhaps the ultimate non-triumphic return) show a character with a lot of anguish, mystery and depth. He, Prideaux and Tarr are purposefully the only characters we get any good handle on as they are the only ones who have been able to, even if only for a second, separate themselves from the Circus. The other characters are mere cogs, extensions of the antiquated and suffocating Circus, epitomized by the very fact that their best descriptors are made-up names given by a paranoid-but-right aging spy. Even still, each and every character is as much defined by their place in the narrative, a beautiful summation I thought to the way the film shows the sad, mournful dominance the Circus has over their lives, so much so that each of them has essentially sacrified all their life to the point that it would be trivial to try and make them well-rounded; their service, this life, this mystery itself is all that they are--it is what they have been reduced to become.

    I found the film overwhelmingly melancholic and just remarkably and palpably tragic.
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  9. #59
    dissolved into molecules lovejuice's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting ledfloyd (view post)
    this film's biggest weakness is it's lack of a sense of humor or humanism.
    I have to disagree with you on this account.

    [
    ]

    Granted, I don't think all these are well translated. Clarity is not this movie's strongest suit.

    And it does contain humor. The title itself -- that chess piece motive -- is an evident of how it doesn't go overboard taking itself way too seriously. If anything, I appreciate its sense of humor more than even in Casino Royale.
    "Over analysis is like the oil of the Match-Cut machine." KK2.0

  10. #60
    ZOT! Adam's Avatar
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    Performances uniformly great and I agree the film's not wholly humor-less, but this was kind of a slog for me. How can these guys' stories be tragic if there's no indication they haven't always been such complete shells of real human beings? Are you supposed to be convinced by that one scene where Kathy Burke's character is going on about the glory days?

    I'll also echo Mike D'Angelo and say that this film seems to have been purposefully edited so as to totally minimize fluidity and comprehension.

  11. #61
    collecting tapes Skitch's Avatar
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    Wow. The love this film is getting is downright baffling to me. I thought I was an incomprehensible mess.

  12. #62
    Eh... Kiusagi's Avatar
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    I thought this was good stuff. It is a lot to take in and I'd be lying if I said I kept up with everything, but there was a lot to like.

    A lot of people are saying this shouldn't be classified as a thriller because it is more of a slow drama and there are no thrills to be found. I can see that point of view, but I thought there were quite a few thrills. I guess the film is more of a character analysis than it is a mystery, but I thought the suspense was well done.

    One other note, I know Gary Oldman was getting a lot of Oscar buzz for this, but I don't think it's going to happen. The cast is so great all-around that nobody really stands out, Oldman included. Though I certainly wouldn't object to him getting a nod.
    Fruitvale Station (Ryan Coogler) - ***
    The World's End (Edgar Wright) - ***

  13. #63
    Quote Quoting Adam (view post)
    I'll also echo Mike D'Angelo and say that this film seems to have been purposefully edited so as to totally minimize fluidity and comprehension.
    Thanks for referencing D'Angelo's review. I'm in complete agreement with this part:

    there seemed to be no relationship between contiguous scenes, or frequently even between contiguous shots. Soderbergh has talked about how he cuts the film in his head as he's shooting it; Alfredson apparently does whatever the opposite of that would be. Same deal here, only this time in a much more convoluted context—I was able, with some effort, to follow what was going on, but practically every cut found me screaming (out loud on one occasion; I live alone) WHAT THE MOTHERFUCK AM I LOOKING AT? I can handle the occasional jarring edit for effect, or even a nonstop barrage of them in something explicitly experimental (e.g. Container), but an adaptation of an author as stubbornly plot-heavy as Le Carré needs to flow, to guide us expertly through the thicket. I felt repeatedly stranded, and not in a productive way. And find it inexplicable that I seem to be alone (apart from otherwise admiring reviews conceding that the story is confusing, which they invariably abscribe to the source material rather than to the direction). Odds are I would have found this underwhelming even had it been crafted with more care, as there seems to me precious little emotional purchase in Smiley's professional detachment—the revelation involving his wife at the very end should cut deep, yet even the invented Christmas-party flashbacks expressly designed to achieve that purpose...no, you know what, that's a function of how they were directed/edited as well. Fuck this dude...

  14. #64
    collecting tapes Skitch's Avatar
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    That is finely stated indeed. I completely agree.

  15. #65
    Whole Sick Crew Benny Profane's Avatar
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    Yeah, I couldn't make much sense of the plot developments, the characters weren't given enough background, and therefore the ending had zero impact on me. The "loyalty" confrontation with Toby especially. I had forgotten that character was even in the film. Thought it had potential but was ultimately weak.
    Now reading: The Master Switch by Tim Wu

  16. #66
    Alone again, naturally eternity's Avatar
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    Ditto D'Angelo/Skitch/Benny/etc.

  17. #67
    i thought the filmmakers gave us plenty of time to absorb the story beats

    loved this movie. easily my favorite movie of '11, although that's not saying much

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  18. #68
    Quote Quoting Acapelli (view post)
    easily my favorite movie of '11, although that's not saying much
    Bad year or minimal viewing?

  19. #69
    Quote Quoting Boner M (view post)
    Bad year or minimal viewing?
    minimal viewing

    not as much of a movie guy as i used to be

  20. #70
    Second star to the right [ETM]'s Avatar
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    *points out the typo in the thread title*

  21. #71
    i am the great went ledfloyd's Avatar
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    http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/20...the-perplexed/

    bordwell deconstructs the film and tries to figure out why so many people are saying it's incomprehensible.

  22. #72
    Ha, I was waiting for a Bordwell post on the film. Will read later.

  23. #73
    Cinematographer StanleyK's Avatar
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    A great movie, which falls just short of being masterful. Its direction is gorgeous, but I wish it lingered on its shots a bit longer (which it certainly would have it if were made in the 70s, the decade the film tries hard- and mostly succeeds- to emulate). And as well-delineated its conflict and main players are, almost none of the characters feel more like real people than just serving their function in the plot (I gather that's kind of the point, but it's still a bit unsatisfying). The biggest strength of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, other than of course Gary Oldman, is its storytelling. I don't see what people are finding so elusive or incomprehensible about it; I didn't have any trouble following it. It's smart and economical, respecting the audience's intelligence and rewarding active investment with some superbly and unconventionally thrilling scenes.

  24. #74
    The part I couldn't follow is what proper nouns or code names referred to what. I think I'd figured it out mostly by the end of the film, but the first half still feels confusing to me, which made the back half confusing. A second viewing might well clear it up.

    It seems there's a fair bit of exposition at the beginning and I think my brain might have refused it because it was overload.

  25. #75
    Evil mind, evil sword. Ivan Drago's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Benny Profane (view post)
    Yeah, I couldn't make much sense of the plot developments, the characters weren't given enough background, and therefore the ending had zero impact on me.
    Glad I'm not the only one who thinks this. As great as the actors were, and as visually well-directed it was, following the plot and story felt like my first viewing of Syriana. Still, it's resonating with me.
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