The train trip to Manchester last Friday was . . . interesting. The weather was good, the city buildings gave way to the fields of suburbia; all-in-all pleasant and unexceptional. We were about five minutes into the journey when things became more eventful. The conductor came on the intercom to request that the owner of the box of pigeons in Coach C, please come and claim them. This announcement was immediately followed by an announcement that while the owner of the pigeons had been found, they were absent a claimant for the penguin. Would the owner of the penguin in Coach C please come forward. “I’m not joking--really!” the conductor intoned.
I drummed my fingers for a few minutes before curiosity got the better of me. I saw the a man with a box of pigeons in the gap between the cars. I entered Coach C just in time to hear a gaggle of men talking convivially in such a fashion that Coach C had turned into an impromptu locker room. I entered on the phrase “Yes, but doesn’t that sort of inhibit the spontaneity of sex?!” Upon reflection I think this question must have been addressed to a person that was wearing a penguin costume. I was at the time, busily confining my gaze toward the back of the coach like a well-trained central park touring Clydesdale with traffic blinders, making my socially precarious way through the midst of a narrow passage between the conversationalists. There was no going back so I hustled swiftly through them to the back of the car and hid for most of the rest of the journey. You would have thought it was spring, the conversations that were flying around that coach! I started looking for the hidden cameras . . . @_@ Speaking of hidden cameras and film, I recently saw Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I’ve been going to a seminar on film for the past month. During that time we have seen a range of films and film clips. Hereto we’ve discussed The Skin I’m In, Jane Eyre, and of course the most recent, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy--which I loved! It was odd though because seminar group made me impromptu representative for the twenty-somethings. Apparently there is a generational gap of patience for this film; there are more people under the age of thirty walking out of theatres than those above the age of thirty? I’m not sure that I buy that age is to blame. I think that patience is to blame--more precisely not having any. Still I found it engaging from the start. It was not the sort of film that needed guns blazing and bombs exploding. It is by far the best crafted and acted film I’ve seen this year. It was better filmed, edited and written (in my opinion) than was Tree of Life. I think it’s a mistake to think of the film as a ‘spy thriller’. The mystery/espionage is to me a vehicle for a bitter romance drama. It is about how in order to do their job and protect the interests of their respective countries, these intelligence operatives must sacrifice their own emotional fulfillment. The symbolism of the protagonist ‘Smiley’ having given his lighter to the arch-nemesis on the other side, ‘Karla’, suggests that he has given his own love and humanity away to ‘the job’; it is a pattern repeated with all of the other characters, who each in different ways, find themselves unable to protect those that they love from the shrapnel of secrecy--from the sharp edges of the daggers/secrets they are sworn to keep cloaked. It is methodical and sensually inundating, like the visual equivalent to a warm walk though New Orleans on a summer night; I loved this film even more the second time around. As for Oldman’s performance as opposed to Guiness’ . . . Well, before Monday’s discussion I told someone there that I felt that Guiness was a more sympathetic ‘Smiley’ but . . . seeing the Oldman performance I think . . . that the difference is not how sympathetic they are, because the are both sympathetic characters. I believe the difference was in how spontaneous the character is portrayed as being. Alec Guiness creates a character visibly impacted by the things he experiences and is motivated to action accordingly. Oldman is all about structure and procedure. He evaluates the world. There is only one region that he is truly demonstrative about and not as procedural--that is regards to his wife . . . whose lack of marital fidelity is used as a distraction to Smiley’s concentration. It speaks to the common thread of the film--that in some sense, the intelligence community is more intimate with colleagues and enemies than they are with their own loved ones.Can you imagine the heartbreak of having to protect someone you truly love by ending the relationship abruptly, without warning and never being able to explain to them why? Or having to assassinate them? Overall a brilliant film from start to finish. BTW, to my knowledge no one ever did come forward to claim that poor lost penguinoid on the train . . .