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 PrintableVersion Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, SpyFanatic concealing a secret doubtTINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY John Le Carre never really engages with Cold War ideology in his books, although he clearly has little time for totalitarian regimes. Of far greater concern are the era’s global contorted spy vs. spy chess games. To his mind, it was always primarily about trust and treachery — with all sides playing the same games. He would agree with that brilliant post-1989 verdict, ‘the right side lost but the wrong side won’. A mole-hunt at the top of the British Secret Service was supremely topical when Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was published in 1974. The aftershocks from Kim Philby’s defection a decade before still reverberated. Philby had held very senior positions (including overseeing MI6’s counter-Soviet operations) and Le Carre was processing this shock. His mole is based on his former colleague, Philby. No wonder, then, that the film’s opening lines concern loyalty not ideology. ‘C’ (the MI6 boss played by John Hurt) exhorts the faithful Prideaux to ‘trust no one, Jim’. Prideaux’s subsequent mission to Hungary instigates the plot amidst the constantly swirling fog of conspiracy and treachery. The subtle, nerve-rattling soundtrack, the brown/greys of 70s decor, together with the elliptical and repressed dialogue, cohere to convey pervading claustrophobic anxiety. This is a stunningly atmospheric and visually arresting film — but it is no nostalgia trip. George Smiley’s London evokes the London of the 1970s ‘Winter of Discontent’. ComparisonsInevitably, the film invites comparisons with the seminal BBC series with Alec Guinness playing Smiley. I needed convincing! While I still consider the series better, the film was compelling precisely because it was different. Its biggest challenge was compression (the series consisted of seven episodes). Despite running for around two hours, I left the film needing more. I suppose that is one criterion for success in any realm. And yet, we needed to know the four suspected moles better. Because the book develops their backstories, we are kept guessing. In the movie version, the suspense must primarily derive from shadowing Smiley on the trail. This makes for a gripping film, but it does leave something lacking. Gary Oldman is a thoroughly plausible Smiley. His repressed frustration at all the betrayals he suffers is palpable and vying with his KGB nemesis, Karla, is clearly what drives him. They are similarly brilliant and calculating, yet with one vital difference. In the film, Smiley reminisces on the chance Karla had to defect to avoid likely execution in the Stalinist purges. He refused — from which Smiley discerns his fatal flaw: fanaticism. Smiley is no fanatic. He has been betrayed too often. But he notes, ‘a fanatic is always concealing a secret doubt’. This is where the film leaves us. Immersed in doubt. Le Carre once said: ‘Smiley is a committed doubter, and to that extent, I think, an extremely contemporary figure’.1 Humility and honestyIdeology, fanaticism and confidence are now taboo. The pervasive deceptions of the Cold War are in part to blame. Consequently, our culture always presumes to understand the convinced better than they do themselves. Those with convictions must be hiding some doubts, surely? No wonder Lyotard’s famous definition of postmodernism as ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’. To those of us with convictions, we must never conceal our doubts (for there walks the hypocrite); but we must always seek to articulate our confidence with compelling humility and honesty. Otherwise, in a culture that values trust much more highly than truth, we risk being dismissed as fanatics with secret doubts who can always be turned. Mark Meynell, 1 Conversations with John Le Carre, Bruccoli & Baughman, p.35© Evangelicals Now - November 2011 |
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