Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

[salymap]

Thanks for the link mercia

[Anna]

The BBC TTSS is on dvd for less than £5 inc p&p via Amazon. I don't expect the film to come here for a while, probably mid/end October. I have the book, debating whether to read it again before seeing the film...

[Mandryka]

My favourite moment from the TV series is the part where Jim Prideauoux (Ian Bannen) is showing off his car to the pupils at the public school where he is teaching. 'Never get another car like this', he sneers, bitterly, 'thanks to SOCIALISM!'

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i have the three novels in one binding of the Karla trilogy ... last read it some ten years or so back .... it ain't just TTSS it's The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People ... as fine a dissection of England in the 20th C as there is ....

[salymap]

I have the book in a book club edition, Anna, quite large print but paper the colour of brown soup [ or summit]. I may have a go at actually trying to readit.

[Nick Armstrong]

The BBC TTSS is on dvd for less than £5 inc p&p via Amazon. I don't expect the film to come here for a while, probably mid/end October. I have the book, debating whether to read it again before seeing the film...

Anna, I'd be inclined to wait and read it after you see the film. I think you'll enjoy the film more on its own terms; and then re-reading the book when imbued with the old atmos. Seeing it made me want to continue to immerse myself in the murky, dingy, misty world of old style spies, and I'm planning to read the book... One of the posts above reminded me that I now live a few minutes away from where Smiley is holed up trying to solve things in the book. When I last read it, I wasn't living in London yet - another reason to give it a re-read

[Mandryka]

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

Saw it this afternoon. First impression, as predicted, was mild disappointment - Le Carre's book has, on the whole, been treated with great respect (perhaps not surprising, as he's listed as an Executive Producer) but the rapid cutting fromp past to present and back again did occasionally jar and woe to those who have not familiarised themselves with either the book or the television series.

Acting is uniformly excellent: yes, Gary Oldman does recall Guiness quite a lot, but maybe this is one part where the shadow of the most famous incumbent is inescapable. Colin Firth impressed me more by giving a totallly different interpretation of Bill Haydon than the one given by Ian Richardson....at the end, we really do see him as a broken man, without any swagger or arrogance.

I think the film has possibly been overpraised because it represents a (now) very rare attempt by a commercial filmmaker to produce a film that actually makes demands on an audience's concentration/intelligence. However, it is definitely worth seeing.

One thing that did confuse me: why was Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch) portrayed as being homosexual in the film, when he's definitely heterosexual in the novel and TV series? This little detail didn't seem to add anything to the story, for me. There is the suggestion of a homoerotic element to the friendship between Pridedeaux and Haydon which is implicit in the book (though not in the tv series) - this was quite subtly dealt with in the film and provided its most moving moment.

[Stunsworth]

I'm planning to see the film later in the week. As a tie in with the film the Guardian are offering 7 _unabridged_ Le Carre audiobooks including Tinker Tailor. Details in the following link...

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?3236-Free-unabridged-John-le-Carre-audiobooks

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

me too Stunsworth ... Wednesday in the porkie pie capital of the universe here in the middle kingdom ... very excited!

[Paul Sherratt]

Leamington Spa, Calum ?

[Stunsworth]

Leamington Spa, Calum ?

Melton Mowbray surely?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

in Victorian times MM was a major centre for recreational fox slaughter and chases .... had to do summat with the horse meat i suppose ... it is also a major base for tins of pet gunk .... something deeply suspect about MM also an army veterinary centre for horses .... the area is also the centre for Stilton production [name from where it was sold not made] .... you might not care to drop dead in MM!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

coo er mamma! what a movie .... we all enjoyed it despite the length of time sitting in cinema seats [her knees my hip etc] Oldman and cast and the look and feel of it awesome ...
swmbo and sprog had plot difficulties [no recognisable villain on screen, the Karla gambit is several plays long etc so explanations required] but were still engrossed .. will get dvd so can watch it over again ...

just engrossing and a world away from the Guinness versions ...

highly recommended

[hackneyvi]

I saw this on Sunday with a friend who is very keen on the TV series. I enjoyed the pace, the performances and the look of the film but didn't draw much of any substance from it. In fact, until Ursula indicated the more substantial aspects of the plot, I hadn't been aware of any. Particularly, I hadn't registered the significance for the UK of 'Witchcraft' and intelligence from the States.

I was interested enough to buy the TV adaptation on Tuesday; £12 for TTSS and Smiley's People as a set! Less than a pound per episode seems like very good value indeed. What really strikes me about the two versions is how much more like literature the TV version is. Perhaps it's the circumstances of watching TV that explain it but TV seems, like a novel, to ask me to enter its world and it takes some times to transit. Conversely, a film seems to throw out a recognisable world from the outset because it has so little time to recommend itself.

By the end of the first episode, I'd crossed into the TV fiction. However, I'm not sure that I ever really entered the film's fiction because it is so heightened. The need for swift comprehensibility of the characters reduces them rather to sketches. The major characters each broadly exhibit an individual human characteristic - ill-temper, reserve, patience etc.
The film seems a slightly more comic book version compared to the BBC production.

The two performed versions between them seemed to show how very personal this kind of work is; the TV in the politics of personality within the Circus, the film in the sense of personal responsibility for field agents who are, effectively, a very vulnerable form of soldiery. Is the book so much more interesting again than the TV (as the TV is more interesting than the film) that it would be a significant pleasure to encounter the story in yet another form?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

... yes i think so hv ... the TTSS The Hon Schoolboy and Smiley's People [the Karla trilogy] are an indispensable account of us brits, our social status [class] and the cold war .... and what the generation who fought WW2 brought into our young lives in the fifties sixties and seventies ... after these LeCarre became somewhat patchy as far as i go with his work, tried many liked some ...