Flawless adaptation of Le Carre classic

I RECENTLY had the dubious pleasure of reading my ASIO file, compiled during the period I directed the Sydney Film Festival in the 1970s.

Tinker Tailor

I RECENTLY had the dubious pleasure of reading my ASIO file, compiled during the period I directed the Sydney Film Festival in the 1970s.

It seems that because back then I had contact with the embassies and consulates of countries in the Eastern European Communist bloc, mainly to invite films from those countries to participate in the festival, and because I visited those places to attend film festivals and to see the latest films (and despite the fact that, with equal regularity, I visited the countries of the West), my phone conversations were tapped and I was occasionally followed. I was quite unaware of this at the time, so the ASIO spooks were at least efficient at that aspect of their jobs but, reading the files today, I wonder at the waste of money, time and effort.

At the same time my innocent activities in film culture were sparking the interest of Australia's spooks, John Le Carre was writing his masterpiece, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, first published in 1974. The book was written in the wake of the spy scandals that rocked Britain: the exposure of three Cambridge-educated "moles", including the notorious Kim Philby. Were there more traitors to be uncovered?

The book was turned into a memorable television series (running 290 minutes) in 1979 with Alec Guinness giving one of his best performances as Smiley, the operative forced into early retirement and then assigned to investigate the identity of a mole within the Circus, the name Le Carre gave to MI6 (because their headquarters was located at Cambridge Circus). Now, years after the end of the Cold War, this memorable book has been turned into an outstanding feature film - perhaps the best film ever made about the business of being a spy.

The basic plot is simple enough: Control (John Hurt), the head of the Circus, sends one of his operatives, Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong) to Budapest to make contact with a Hungarian general thought to be ready to defect; the general knows the identity of the Soviet mole operating within the Circus. The operation goes badly wrong and Control is forced into retirement from his position along with his closest ally, George Smiley (Gary Oldman). Some time later, Smiley is approached by a ministerial under-secretary, Oliver Lacon (Simon McBurney) and informed that Control's theory about a mole in the Circus is now accepted. It is Smiley's mission to identify the man.

There are four main suspects: career officer Percy Alleline (Toby Jones), who has taken over from Control along with Toby Esterhase (David Dencik), Bill Haydon (Colin Firth) and Roy Bland (Ciaran Hinds). With the help of Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch), who still has access to the Circus, Smiley sets about quietly and methodically to identify the traitor.

The new film, at 127 minutes, is less than half the length of the television series, but it feels complete. A remarkable job of condensation has been achieved by the screenwriters, Peter Straughan and his late partner Bridget O'Connor. Some scenes have inevitably been dropped, and some characters altered, but the tone and mood of the book have been perfectly retained. A scene of a raucous Christmas party at the Circus, during which some revelations occur, is not in the book; Straughan told me Le Carre asserted that such a party did take place and that when things got a little out of hand and Russian songs were loudly sung by the revellers, neighbours called the police.

It was a bold, but absolutely correct, decision to chose a Swedish director, Tomas Alfredson, to handle this quintessentially English material.

Alfredson is best known for his superb vampire movie, Let the Right One In, but his background was in comedy and he brings a sharp sense of the absurd to the carryings-on of these very British spies. He's also working with a flawless cast: Oldman's Smiley is rather tougher than that of Guinness, but he's perfect in the part, and the rest, including Kathy Burke as Connie Sachs, the most significant woman Circus employee, are flawless. I can't imagine a better adaptation of one of my favourite novels.