A Monday heresy
By Mark Vernon on Monday, September 19 2011, 09:21 - Personal observations - Permalink
I didn't like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy. I couldn't make head or tail of what was going on for almost all the time, and it didn't add up by the end. It took wikipedia for me to sort it out.
It's true that it's beautifully filmed and cinema insiders are loving it for its homages to Hitchcock etc. It's true that Gary Oldman has a smile like the Mona Lisa, hovering in between emotional states so as to seem almost from another world. It's watchable.
But what is a thriller if it fails to tell the story? And it's not just that it's demanding. I like demanding. I felt it was crudely obfuscatory. That's not a playful trick, a brilliant reversal, an artful unfolding. It's cheap narration.
Comments
I haven't seen it, but your disappointment is one that I recognise; that of plot failing to do its job. Plot or story is paradoxical, in that when done well it points to the transcendental, yet when separated out from the contexts of mood and character it can sound plain daft. Aristotle was essentially right about its importance. My guess is that technology has advanced our means of providing mood and special effects and even what passes for "character", yet there is no quick fix for storytelling.
The first time I saw Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, I was amazed that theatre could be that good. Everything was clear, in the sense that characters did what they somehow *had to*, and this was enlightening and moving. Every time since, however, the production has seemed impenetrable. Strange people being mournfully emotional in a kind of Turgenev-inspired beauty, but me struggling to understand why they are doing what they are doing.
To continue the heretical stance, I guess my default position is that there is too much "art" (in the sense of entertainment), and too few genuine artists. A genuine Marxist crisis of overproduction, where the result is not "poverty in the midst of plenty", but perpetual dissatisfaction in the midst of spectacle.
Mark, I was really pleased to read this post, as I went to the film on Friday night and nearly died of boredom. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a great novel, and the TV series with Alec Guinness a masterpiece, but the movie was diabolical. Two hours was simply two short a time to render an enjoyable adaptation of the novel. Furthermore, I thought it was a movie full of its own self-importance and stuffed with heavy portentousness. I wonder if all of the critics who gave it five stars simply yielded to the pressure of expectation generated by the run-up.
It was an excellent character study: it's a shame they left the plot to one side.
Obfuscatory is soooo twentieth-century....