Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (redux)
Jan. 29th, 2012 06:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaNow reading the book, stopped exactly halfway through to read the ILX thread. Link me if you've got posts; I've seen the movie so spoilers are fine. XD
The movie script turns out to be a remix, essentially, in the fanfiction sense - a total rewrite (with Le Carre's input, apparently) of the same events, with the same characters, to make them work as a movie. As opposed to massive chunks of expository flashback seamlessly integrated with scenes of, uh, Smiley sitting about reading budget meeting minutes. Which is actually the aspect that rings (horribly) truest, as opposed to all the "two weeks later he was in Istanbul" spy exotica.
The other thing about this book is that it makes the BBC characterization of Mycroft Holmes seem a lot less fantastical. XD; MI6 runs some sort of on-campus recruitment office at Oxford, apparently, based on the ability to perform what TV Tropes calls "the Sherlock" (at any rate, everyone in the book can do it offhand, and it's clearly one of Prideaux's criteria. You see him skewing younger but Le Carre's thesis seems to be that "the Sherlock" is God's given gift to unhappy public schoolboys from broken homes, the rest is just nurture).
EDIT -- geebus I can't believe the book actually goes for theSeishun Gakuen tennis club university flashback. Like it wasn't sad enough in the movie! I can't tell if it's all meant to be overt or covert, by the way, since the contextual ruler is so farked. XD;
EDIT 2 -- OK I guess I should unpack that. It's because you get more Prideaux characterization early on in the book, due to the little kid's framing narration, and he came across like a morally upright person with no sense of humour XD so I was sitting there going, geez, this guy must've been like the Tezuka Kunimitsu of the Circus??? And then like 200 pages later, Haydon's embarrassing undergrad memorandum about how the morning after he picks up Prideaux for the first time Prideaux makes him time him for TWENTY LAPS AROUND THE FIELD. And I'm like "......"
EDIT 3 -- forgot to mention that Guillam's sexuality change in the movie is a genuine improvement on the book, because it makes the thematic point succinctly without belabouring Guillam's obsession with his Manic Pixie Dream Girl gf, which felt like [INSERT CHARACTERIZATION] and was just annoying/pointless after the first ten times he broods about her; as if Smiley obsessing over Ann wasn't enough of that. (Also, no one seems to have anything to say about Ann except that she's SUPER HAWT har har.) IIRC the costume designer of the movie talked about how according to her research, men in that milieu liked to make personal style statements, within the boundaries of their conservative middle/upper class dress code, and it seems like part of the generalization of the book is that they like artsy/hippie-ish/MPDG women as well...? Or maybe Le Carre needs to stop writing women, or learn to write them better, either way. XD Plus, the Haydon/Prideaux relationship is actually mirrored in minor ways through the book, and the movie loses that level of detail, so needs to bring it back via some other method.
(I wonder if Le Carre was having actual love life trouble while writing this? XD; Because the brooding seeps into EVERYTHING, to the point where Smiley lampshades it in his Karla story. Speaking of which, apparently Patrick Stewart plays Karla in the original BBC series but has no lines because, yanno. He just sits there. AMAZING.)
The movie script turns out to be a remix, essentially, in the fanfiction sense - a total rewrite (with Le Carre's input, apparently) of the same events, with the same characters, to make them work as a movie. As opposed to massive chunks of expository flashback seamlessly integrated with scenes of, uh, Smiley sitting about reading budget meeting minutes. Which is actually the aspect that rings (horribly) truest, as opposed to all the "two weeks later he was in Istanbul" spy exotica.
The other thing about this book is that it makes the BBC characterization of Mycroft Holmes seem a lot less fantastical. XD; MI6 runs some sort of on-campus recruitment office at Oxford, apparently, based on the ability to perform what TV Tropes calls "the Sherlock" (at any rate, everyone in the book can do it offhand, and it's clearly one of Prideaux's criteria. You see him skewing younger but Le Carre's thesis seems to be that "the Sherlock" is God's given gift to unhappy public schoolboys from broken homes, the rest is just nurture).
EDIT -- geebus I can't believe the book actually goes for the
EDIT 2 -- OK I guess I should unpack that. It's because you get more Prideaux characterization early on in the book, due to the little kid's framing narration, and he came across like a morally upright person with no sense of humour XD so I was sitting there going, geez, this guy must've been like the Tezuka Kunimitsu of the Circus??? And then like 200 pages later, Haydon's embarrassing undergrad memorandum about how the morning after he picks up Prideaux for the first time Prideaux makes him time him for TWENTY LAPS AROUND THE FIELD. And I'm like "......"
EDIT 3 -- forgot to mention that Guillam's sexuality change in the movie is a genuine improvement on the book, because it makes the thematic point succinctly without belabouring Guillam's obsession with his Manic Pixie Dream Girl gf, which felt like [INSERT CHARACTERIZATION] and was just annoying/pointless after the first ten times he broods about her; as if Smiley obsessing over Ann wasn't enough of that. (Also, no one seems to have anything to say about Ann except that she's SUPER HAWT har har.) IIRC the costume designer of the movie talked about how according to her research, men in that milieu liked to make personal style statements, within the boundaries of their conservative middle/upper class dress code, and it seems like part of the generalization of the book is that they like artsy/hippie-ish/MPDG women as well...? Or maybe Le Carre needs to stop writing women, or learn to write them better, either way. XD Plus, the Haydon/Prideaux relationship is actually mirrored in minor ways through the book, and the movie loses that level of detail, so needs to bring it back via some other method.
(I wonder if Le Carre was having actual love life trouble while writing this? XD; Because the brooding seeps into EVERYTHING, to the point where Smiley lampshades it in his Karla story. Speaking of which, apparently Patrick Stewart plays Karla in the original BBC series but has no lines because, yanno. He just sits there. AMAZING.)
no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 09:44 am (UTC)bc pretty much right up until the reveal, i was like, MAN NO it couldn't possibly be him, he's way too sleazy and stands out too much! it'd be too obvious if it were him! only of course then... it was... him...
no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 10:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 10:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 04:29 pm (UTC)In the book, if I'd been reading it unspoilered, way earlier for thematic/structural reasons. XD Smiley is the protag - and not a one-off protag, Alleline is obviously a stooge, everyone kind of snobs about Bland who is working class and Esterhase who is foreign, so they are the red herrings because in a horrible subtextual way it would have been like The Butler Did It. Or The Butler Did It because he was justifiably pissed off at the rotten class system riddling the whole thing, whatever. (Actually as dubdobdee (Mark S) points out on the ILX thread, there's a bit of a plot hole because Smiley clears Toby Esterhase first and grills him, and you never get a justification for why he's cleared. XD Except for the fact that he's lowest in the hierarchy and it's, yanno, obviously not him.)
Like, the class system is so much of what is actually fucked up about the Circus as shown (metaphor for pre-Thatcher IRL) that the mole basically has to be the guy with the most privilege. (And if you have the misfortune of reading the intro, Le Carre spoilers it, by talking about how he wanted to have suspects like Philby and Blake, but he hated Philby and liked Blake for reverse snobbery reasons. XD;) In the book, you're clearly meant to home in on Haydon as soon as you hit the slip-up with Ann, because after that the successive reveals about Operation Testify are meant to show you that this was a personal betrayal of Jim Prideaux, which you didn't know before. In the movie it's more muddled because things aren't in the same order.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 02:30 am (UTC)(I actually couldn't figure out why Esterhase was cleared either XDDDDDD Glad to know it wasn't just my ADD reading kicking in, which it often is.)
no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 03:36 am (UTC)