Postcards from Oz - AU Edition

I watched the Alec Guinness Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy with skygiants and genarti when I visited Massachusetts (a month ago now; where does the time go?), and I’ve been procrastinating writing about it, because how does one review perfection?

It’s so good. Quite possibly the perfect adaptation. Alec Guinness makes an amazing Smiley. Possibly not as plain and tubby as Smiley ought to be, but he’s projecting that as hard as he can nonetheless. And he’s just so good at Smiley’s style of sympathetic understatement where he might not actually be sympathetic to whatever line of bull his horrible loser interlocutor is trying to feed him, but it would take an awfully attentive listener to realize that, and most of the people around him never seem to listen at all.

Much is made in the books of Smiley’s amazing spy skills, and I have accepted this without ever exactly being able to put my finger on what those skills are, except maybe the patience to deep-dive in the files. But the miniseries suggests that Smiley’s other secret weapon is the ability to listen, and not only listen but radiate the aura of attentive, thoughtful, sympathetic listening that makes people want to keep talking.

His not-at-all secret weakness is his adored wife Anne, who is sleeping with a Who’s Who of all the important men in London. Just about everyone Smiley meets taunts him with this in not-very-veiled terms. (“Give my love to Anne,” says an obnoxious acquaintance in the first episode. “Give everybody’s love to Anne!”) Amazing example of a character who is hugely present despite not actually showing up till the final episode, during one of the rare sunny moments of a show that takes place mostly in clouds and rain and darkness. Anne actually is one of the bright spots of Smiley’s life despite also being the bane of his existence.

But it would be a mistake to focus too closely on Smiley, because the whole ensemble cast is excellent, and the production really gives the characterization room to breathe. The first scene simply consists of four men assembling one by one around a table, smoking cigarettes, sipping coffee, flipping through folders of papers, clearing their throats… until at last the final man arrives and the meeting gets started and you see, “Ah, that’s the one in charge.”

That’s Bill Haydon. You don’t learn his name yet, and you also don’t learn for a while that he’s not technically the boss, but also you already know most of what you need to know about him.

The adaptation hews quite close to the book, but not slavishly so; clearly the product of people who love and admire Le Carre’s work but also recognize that the challenges of adapting a written work to a visual medium can require some tweaks.

They did make one change I absolutely loved, which was ( spoilers )

Just gorgeous. Absolutely amazing. I want to watch the sequel Smiley’s People, which has a reprise cast, but I’m also not sure that I’m strong enough to watch two Smiley adaptations in one year, especially since this is the one adapting the book with the most Karla (played by Patrick Stewart) (did not write about the scene in this series where Smiley and Karla face off and Karla just sits there, absolutely silent, and dominating the room in that silence) and I feel they may add a Karla bit that will bring me to my knees like the part under the spoiler cut above.

Clearly I’ll simply have to wait until I visit Boston again to watch Smiley’s People.