Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is the best spy movie I've ever seen, and the truest spy war movie. There are many people who love it, and many who don't, but whether they like it or not, they have to admit that this is a very English movie, to the extent that England has nothing to do with Scotland. This is a rather gloomy and calm film. This British gloom is not only reflected in the visual style, but also in the story and details, but the core of the film is not the coldness presented in the vision and the story, but rather fiery. It would be an understatement to say that this is the most touching movie I have ever seen.
I have never liked suspense films very much. I always find the sudden reversal very annoying. Most of the reversals of suspense films are reversals for the sake of reversal. I feel that the writers and directors are completely immersed in the pleasure of intellectual superiority. Once you know who the "murderer" is, it's boring to look at it again. "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" is a suspense film that will never get tired of watching it many times. There are so many things to watch outside of the story. No one is really stupid. They are all pretending to be stupid. , behind it is a deep heart like the sea, and only after watching can you appreciate the performance of the actors. Whether it is loyalty or betrayal, everyone goes on and off the stage with dignity, "A man should know when to leave the party." The art of the film is also exquisite, and countless small art designs also hint who is the mole, and several different lines Lines can lead us to a great opponent who did not show up - Karla.
lonely people
As much as I hate repeating the plot, the plot is really the core of the whole film. It doesn't matter who the mole is, what matters is how they see themselves and others. In fact, not only in the world of espionage, the only thing that matters to anyone is what to believe and what not to believe. Although there are many characters in the film, there are only three core characters, Smiley, Tarr and Jim. Let's see what their character arc looks like. I don't want to talk too much about Smiley. From the main line, he is just a clue character. His perspective is the perspective of the audience. Jim and Tarr are worth a good look.
All the people in the rounder are British gentlemen. The British gentleman's style is not only in the exquisite clothes, but also in the way they speak and behave. They use their words carefully, behave civilly, and work very seriously. But this is the good side of gentlemen. Gentlemen are very indifferent, have a strong sense of distance when dealing with people, and have no personal relationships with people. Of course, there are exceptions, and Jim and Bill have a personal relationship.
Jim's story goes like this, he was Control's most trusted man and was sent to Budapest to contact a Hungarian general who wanted to defect. Jim was the first to hear about Control's reasoning about moles in the Circus 5, and he thought Control's idea was crazy, but went for it out of respect for the leadership. Before he went, he instinctively thought that the mole might be Bill. He had a personal relationship with Bill, so he knew that Bill might be a mole, and it was later confirmed that Jim did go to Bill to warn him before leaving for Hungary.
Jim always knew in his heart that Bill might be a mole, he just wasn't sure, he and the little fat guy also called Bill said this: "Bill, the unpaid bill" There is no understanding of the account to be calculated. But he said, "Know a lot of Bills in my time, they have all been good." Bill is a good guy, but he uses the perfect tense. He doesn't know if Bill is still a good guy.
When Smiley came to visit, Jim and Fatty said:
"who is he, Beggar man? Thief?"
Beggar was the code name Control gave Smiley, and he would rather doubt Smiley than Bill.
But in the end he still killed Bill, Paid bill, and the two were cleared.
Tarr is also an interesting character, he's not a meticulous intelligence gentleman, he's a playboy. After discovering that the target he wanted to rebel against was a KGB spy, he should have returned to London immediately, but he took the opportunity to start hooking up with his wife. It was estimated that it was just a play, but it fell into it and started "Holiday romance". But in the end he really fell in love with this Russian woman Elena, desperate to save her from Karla, neither Smiley nor Bill, no one in the rounder could do such a thing.
It was a little sad that Tarr was waiting in the rain for Elena, who had already been killed by Karla, but he wasn't an intelligence material at all.
chess, door and window
Control pasted the pictures of the five high-rises in the Circus on the chess pieces and gave them corresponding code names, so that chess became the most important symbolic intention in the film. The director is afraid that the chess pieces will cause over-interpretation, so the photos in the shots where the chess pieces appear several times in the film do not correspond one-to-one with the chess pieces. Nonetheless, I would like to make some interpretations about the pieces. The chess piece representing Smiley is the queen, the queen is the most powerful piece in chess. He can walk straight like a rook or diagonally like Xiang. According to the rules (not the rules), when his queen is captured by the opponent After a fall, a decent player should concede defeat. So when the boss was forced to leave the rounder with Smiley, who was a decent guy and lost the whole game, there was no need to stay and fight later.
Although the chess pieces have no room for the audience to play, the chessboard and the intention to play chess are still very important, and the main visual features of the film are unfolded from this. Like a huge chessboard; the wallpaper when the KGB was interrogating Jim was checkered; the hotel room where Smiley worked had huge square window frames; when Jim collapsed on the streets of Budapest, the floor tiles were diamond-shaped mosaics... Smiley was arranging Peter's first In one action, the pawn on the table was moved forward, indicating that the battle between him and Karla began. It is well known that the Russians are masters of chess, especially when the Soviet Union dominated the world chess world for 30 years during the Cold War, Smiley couldn't help but sweat.
Visual elements similar to a chessboard are doors and windows. The first shot of the film is the closed door, and then the boss opens the door and shares his deepest secret with Jim. Almost every shot in the film since then has a window or door, symbolizing secrecy and isolation. The design of the rooms in the Circus is very strange and abrupt. There are many small rooms in the huge empty hall. Many shots are taken through doors and windows, or even a few doors and windows, which means that Smiley is trying to spy on the secrets of the Circus. , also represents the gap between the characters in the film. Although the characters in the film are all poker faces with indistinct joy and anger, there is a big rock that makes people breathless in their souls.
Clothing Hidden Secrets
The British can wear clothes because of the civilization of the world. They pay attention to the feeling of wearing ordinary suits out of a uniform, highlighting a decent, rather than the flamboyant personality of the Americans and Italians. In fact, this is similar to the Germans. The Germans have simpler heads and almost no brains. They simply symbolize and wear uniforms directly. They did not correct this tradition until they were defeated. "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" is a British blockbuster, and the costume design must be paid attention to. We can also decipher a lot of information from the elegant costume design.
First of all, the rounder's 5-member group all wore tweeds, all solid-color suits, and 4 of them were single-breasted three-piece suits. The only exception is Percy, who wears a double-breasted plaid, no waistcoat, and a gun lapel, while everyone else has a lapel. Percy wasn't the highest-ranking man in the room, and it was inappropriate to dress like this, and it betrayed his ambition to climb the ladder. When Percy sat on the throne of Control, it even worsened. In a scene where he questioned Peter, his double-breasted suit was also equipped with a waistcoat. The double-breasted suit was originally invented to avoid wearing a waistcoat. Obsessed with power. Everyone in the rounder neither liked him nor respected him, and everyone could see his obsession with power, calling it His majesty and teasing him.
Secondly, 4 of 5 people wear ties, only Toby has a bow tie, which implies that he is not British and is not reliable. Outside the house, he stood up without the buttons of his coat, revealing his waistcoat and pocket watch chain, with a good look. This person is also not likable, and the boss gestures behind his back just after the accident. Bill looked down on the man and called him "little prick". In the latter scene, Toby is on the phone in Hungarian, Bill comes in and asks where Percy is, Toby looks nervous, and Bill says goodbye to him in Hungarian, which reminds him of your little gestures. They have always been wary of each other.
In the end, 4 of the 5 people are all dark suits and light-colored shirts, only Control is an exception, gray suits and gray shirts, this is the same as the outside, in his eyes, the other five people are different from the outside, they may all be moles . The Permanent Secretary of Intelligence, Lacon, who asked Smiley to catch the mole, was also wearing a gray suit and a gray sweater when he was assigned the task, which means that he actually inherited the cause of Control and was determined to find the mole.
Additionally, 4 of the 5 in the rounder in the conference room wore dark ties or bow ties, with the only exception being Bill, who wore a red tie, implying that he was a mole. Both Bill and Smiley wear red ties at the recurring Christmas Party in the film, with Smiley being darker and Bill being lighter, with a gold pattern, another hint of the Soviet Union. There is also the only shot of Ann, who is wearing a red dress, almost the same color as Bill's tie, suggesting a lover relationship between the two.
Smiley came home and met Bill. He didn't put on his shoes, and showed red socks. This was both an exposure of an affair and an exposure of his identity. The socks were red, which symbolized the Soviet Union. But Smiley didn't want to bring personal grievances to work, and didn't suspect Bill, it was his pride that blinded him. Bill wasn't really "caught in bed", he deliberately revealed his flaws, this was all Karla's arrangement, and Smiley really got caught, Karla is really a terrible and powerful opponent.
In the film, only Bill and Peter wore fine plaid shirts, one blue and the other white, representing their unusual relationship. The interior of the cabin where Bill was imprisoned was light blue, almost the same color as the car he gave Peter, again emphasizing the relationship between the two. Both ended up homeless, trapped in blue cells and cars.
Connie may seem like an unremarkable character, but she's actually very important, and as permanent secretary she probably has more information than anyone in the rounder. Whether Smiley, Percy, Bill, Peter or even Control, she watched them grow, and she called them Boys. If Control is the father of the Circus, Connie is the mother of the Circus. Connie wears a cashew-patterned white shirt while investigating Polyakov, while Control wears a similarly patterned black nightgown when he greets Jim in the opening credits, indicating that the two suspects coincide. Her clue is Smiley's first clue, and it is also the most important and core clue, which directly helps Smiley finally find out the mole.
All the men in the film wear low-key and dull suits, with the only exception being Ricki Tarr, played by Mr. Tang. He wore a shearling fur coat, jeans and Jack Purcell sneakers, and the only British outfit on his body was a Harrington jacket from Baracuta, which was a rare light blue and khaki, and didn't look British at all. His behavior is even more like an American cowboy, reckless and bold, which also determines that he can only do some dirty work and has no future. He's the only person who has a direct emotional outburst in the film, the only person who brings his personal life into his work, and the only person who has little interest in the roundabout. He had already seen through the messy lives of people like Smiley. After experiencing this adventure, he had no intention of continuing to mix in the intelligence circle, and wanted to find a way out for himself.
details and characters
We need to decide if want to be part of the past or part of the future.
This is what Percy said when Control questioned Percy's intelligence source. In fact, there is not only one mole in the rounder's 5-member group, Bill is just a mole who defected to the Soviet Union, and the other three in the rounder all fell to the United States. In the original novel, the reason why Bill defected was that he was originally satisfied with the international status of Britain after the war, but the Suez Canal incident made him realize the true state of the so-called British Empire, that is, the British Empire has been reduced to a second-class country, and it is not together with the United States. Even Egypt can't be cleaned up, the era of "Rule Britannica" is gone. He believed that the Soviet Union would replace Britain as the host of the new world order, so he defected to Karla. It wasn't just Bill who realized this. The Foreign Secretary couldn't wait to please the Americans for the same reason. The ambitious Percy saw this and believed in Polyakov, which also gave Karla a chance to infiltrate the Circus.
So in the final analysis, only Control and Smiley are still loyal to the British Empire in the high-level circles. Although there is only one mole, Control and Smiley are already alone, so when it comes to exit, it is like an empire where the sun never sets. When others decide to be a part of the future, these two oldies decide to be part of the past, and they are still trying to maintain the decency of Cambridge Circus, which makes me very sad. Many details of the film show the nostalgia of the two, adding a lot of texture to the film.
The first thing for Smiley, who is retired and unemployed, is to get a pair of glasses. He needs to look at the circle from a different angle. It's a clever design, because there are a lot of Smiley's memories inserted in the film, and the two glasses can distinguish between memories and reality. If Smiley was watching TV, it should be an interview commemorating the bombing of London during World War II, and a person was telling the story of Churchill saving her life. In Churchill's eyes, World War II was the best day. He saw people reading books calmly on the streets of London, which had been bombed by the Germans. He believed that this was a great nation and strengthened the belief that Britain would not die.
Also nostalgic for World War II is Control. There is an English bulldog in the Control office. This thing is characterized by tenacity. Once it bites its prey, it will never let go like a crocodile. It is a symbol of British tenacity and fighting to the end in World War II. Image of bulldog. The image of the bulldog also appeared in "007 Skyfall", I don't know if it was inspired by "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy".
Connie was thinking the same way. Smiley went to visit her in Oxford, and she invited Smiley to look at old photos together, including Bill and Jim's group photo, Control's WWII uniform, and said "All my lovely boys" with nostalgia. Smiley reminded her:
“It was a war.”
“A real war, English men could be proud of.”
Experts don't play stupid. Of course, Connie knew that Smiley was here to catch the mole. She didn't want to know the result, so she begged Smiley not to come again, so as to keep a good memory. Control, Smiley, Bill, Jim all graduated from Cambridge, but Connie chose to go to Oxford after retirement. Cambridge and Oxford are like our Qingbei, with endless life and endless diss. It can be seen that Connie was seriously injured. She "betrayed" Cambridge Circus by running to Oxford.
After Smiley retired, he still maintained the habit of sticking wooden wedges in the crack of the door after leaving home. What is the use of a retired old man who has lost his power? Who would come to trouble him? It's not so much a habit, it's more self-respect, or pride, he firmly believes that he is still useful, the rounder still needs him, and his relationship with Karla is not over.
When Peter went down the stairs after stealing the watch, Roy passed by him and hummed "Mister Wu" to remind him not to play tricks, someone was watching you. Roy had lunch with Peter after the first time he stole the file, and Peter can be seen blushing with fright in the cut-out clip. In addition, when Smiley and Peter met alone, they also used a ghost point of view. There are all signs that Peter has actually been exposed, which is why Percy will suspect him. There are no fools in the circle. Smiley gently advised him to pay attention to what should be dealt with, the struggle is so cruel.
The paintings Bill sent to Ann have a strong Malevich style. Malevich is a Russian painter. His most famous work is the "Black Square" created in 1915. This is an epoch-making work. It was displayed in the "Red corner" of the exhibition hall. This was originally a Russian icon. The position represents the beginning of a new era. Sending this work to Ann naturally has a meaning, the era of the United Kingdom has passed, and the future belongs to the Russians. After Ann abandoned Smiley again, he often looked at the painting in fascination.
Shakespearean lines
The lines of the film are concise, but unfortunately, as a spy film, most of them talk about things, and there are not many lines about emotions. But how could the British be together without Shakespeare? Peter recites a poem "Casabianca" in the safe house
Theboy stood on the burning deck
Whenceall but him had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
Shoneround him o'er the dead.
Peter's reciting this poem is not actually showing that he is a literary youth, and he is not "pretending". This poem was written into the textbooks of British primary schools in the 1850s and 1950s, requiring students to recite but not to understand, so when Peter was auditioning, he remembered this poem and recited to me "the bright moon in front of the bed is suspected to be on the ground" Frost" is almost the same, because this is the only Tang poem that I can recite proficiently after becoming semi-literate. This move is mostly unintentional, but it is worth pondering if you experience it carefully.
This poem commemorates a real event that occurred in 1798 when the French battleship Orient, the flagship of the French fleet, sank in the Nile War. The Royal Navy launched an attack on the warship, British marines and sailors had already boarded the ship, and the warship was set on fire. Captain Luis Casabianca's young son, Giocante (there are different accounts of his age, 10, 12 and 13) remained at his post until he disappeared into the blazing fire of the powder magazine.
This poem is quite touching here. A brave boy stands on the post on a burning warship full of enemies, waiting for his father's orders, but he does not know that his father has died in battle. The boys were Smiley and Peter, the father was Control, and the burning warship was the Cambridge Circus. They are embattled on all sides, not only against Karla, but also their own people in the rounder, and this poem is emotionally the climax of the whole film. Seeing this passage reminds me of a poem by Hemingway:
"You are so brave and quiet, that I forgot you are suffering."
They are ordinary, humble, but brave and proud people.
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