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redfiona99The case for the prosecution:
This is one of the ones where I expect some disagreement because I know this film was up for awards, awards that weren't Razzies, and some of the awards were for the screenplay, which is the main thing I will criticise. But the film wasn't that good, and it certainly wasn't as good as it could have been.
I know that it can't be the book. There's no way you can squish everything into the length of a film. I have made my peace with only getting one out of Sam Collins and Jerry Westerby, and I'm never getting Max, but it's odd what they've done to the women.
Ann, for instance, who the film reduces to a voiceless, faceless, nymphomaniacal cipher, is a vibrant, forceful, intriguing, admittedly nymphomaniacal, enigma in the book. You can see why George fell for her, and that's all missing in the film. And it's quite disturbing, the lengths that the film goes to to keep her faceless and voiceless.
If Ann was the only female character that happened to, it wouldn't be so odd - Ann's a difficult character to capture - but it's all the women who are somehow diminished: Irina who outranks her old man, Connie, Molly Purcell who is completely written out, Sal the librarian who Peter asks out, not the other way round. All the women are diminished.
To try to divert suspicion from who the mole turns out to be (keeping this vague to try to avoid spoiling people), they take away parts of the mole's character and give them to other characters. It means we don't understand why every is so obsessed by X, and there's not that terrible sense of betrayal when the mole is revealed.
It misses something, and all the somethings it misses are important things. It's a very un-thrilling thriller.
The scene itself:
Why the scene is so good:
This scene is the one exception to my comment of "it could have been so much better". My description at the time was OMGoshWow!
While I complain about the film, there's several scenes where it could have gone for a flashback* and didn't , and this is another one. It would have been so easy to make this a flashback, easy and understandable. But they don't. They also don't have Smiley talking to Guillam. He's talking at him, and Control and Karla, and raging at himself and the system. All their ghosts are in the room with them.
It's a fantastic scene.
*There is one major flashback scene that the film keeps returning to. Like the book the film keeps coming back to different people's experiences of one night. The scene the film keeps returning to is the dreadful Christmas party, rather than the dreadful night that Testify comes crashing down, which is the night the book constantly returns to. It's an interesting choice, and I see why they made it (it's a lot easier to signify the affair by George catching them at it than him seeing spoiler put his shoes back on), but it's a symptom of the un-thrilling thriller problem. The party is a character scene that causes squirming, rather than a character scene that builds tension like the night of Testify's fall.
This is one of the ones where I expect some disagreement because I know this film was up for awards, awards that weren't Razzies, and some of the awards were for the screenplay, which is the main thing I will criticise. But the film wasn't that good, and it certainly wasn't as good as it could have been.
I know that it can't be the book. There's no way you can squish everything into the length of a film. I have made my peace with only getting one out of Sam Collins and Jerry Westerby, and I'm never getting Max, but it's odd what they've done to the women.
Ann, for instance, who the film reduces to a voiceless, faceless, nymphomaniacal cipher, is a vibrant, forceful, intriguing, admittedly nymphomaniacal, enigma in the book. You can see why George fell for her, and that's all missing in the film. And it's quite disturbing, the lengths that the film goes to to keep her faceless and voiceless.
If Ann was the only female character that happened to, it wouldn't be so odd - Ann's a difficult character to capture - but it's all the women who are somehow diminished: Irina who outranks her old man, Connie, Molly Purcell who is completely written out, Sal the librarian who Peter asks out, not the other way round. All the women are diminished.
To try to divert suspicion from who the mole turns out to be (keeping this vague to try to avoid spoiling people), they take away parts of the mole's character and give them to other characters. It means we don't understand why every is so obsessed by X, and there's not that terrible sense of betrayal when the mole is revealed.
It misses something, and all the somethings it misses are important things. It's a very un-thrilling thriller.
The scene itself:
Why the scene is so good:
This scene is the one exception to my comment of "it could have been so much better". My description at the time was OMGoshWow!
While I complain about the film, there's several scenes where it could have gone for a flashback* and didn't , and this is another one. It would have been so easy to make this a flashback, easy and understandable. But they don't. They also don't have Smiley talking to Guillam. He's talking at him, and Control and Karla, and raging at himself and the system. All their ghosts are in the room with them.
It's a fantastic scene.
*There is one major flashback scene that the film keeps returning to. Like the book the film keeps coming back to different people's experiences of one night. The scene the film keeps returning to is the dreadful Christmas party, rather than the dreadful night that Testify comes crashing down, which is the night the book constantly returns to. It's an interesting choice, and I see why they made it (it's a lot easier to signify the affair by George catching them at it than him seeing spoiler put his shoes back on), but it's a symptom of the un-thrilling thriller problem. The party is a character scene that causes squirming, rather than a character scene that builds tension like the night of Testify's fall.
