I remember vividly the first time I fell asleep in a movie. It was in 1986, Under The Cherry Moon, "starring" that little dipstick Prince. And it sucked like a warehouse full of Dysons.
Last night I came close several times, and it was only thanks to repeated nudges from Mrs. Page that I didn't let everyone in the theater know how little I thought of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. It was inordinately slow. I'd say "Slower, and less interesting than watching paint dry" if I hadn't already used an analogy in the first paragraph, and used the "drying paint" line in another recent post.
What staggers me is not that such an array of fabulous British actors (Oldman, Hinds, Hurt, Firth, Strong, Burke, and more) could conspire to disappoint me so, but that every other review I've read seems to applaud this snooze-fest.
And why make it so dour? The 70s was all disco fever - big hair, wide ties, and even wider flared pants. Yet here, under Tomas Alfredson's direction, London feels like the Gulag, with muted tones, dreary housing, plain clothes, and everyone a 3-pack-a-day smoker.
What a shame. I remember reading many of Le Carré's books and marveling at the intrigue. I even made excuses for last night's movie to my wife, saying it was the Anthony Blunt Affair, during Margaret Thatcher's prime ministership, that got me hooked on Le Carré.
Anthony Blunt, the so-called Fourth Man in the Cambridge Five spy ring, passed secrets to Moscow while working for MI5 during the Second
World War. Blunt was appointed Surveyor of the King’s Pictures in 1945, continuing the
role under the Queen. He was knighted in 1956. Anyhow, the revelation that some old fart in Her Majesty's entourage had been passing secrets to the enemy was a very big deal at the time, and sparked in me an interest in John Le Carré, which led to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, which led to me lying awake at night repeating Russian names, which ended my love affair with that genre.
And if it hadn't already ended, last night would have killed it dead.
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