A review of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, in The Huffington Post
A major problem in this movie is one that all storytellers must deal with. There has to be in every story at least one character for whom the reader or viewer really cares. Someone has got to matter emotionally. Be it the hero or the villain or someone central in between, at least one major character must be someone who moves us and whose welfare matters to us. Someone interesting. Someone possessed of willful idiosyncrasies, driven, murderous intensity, fascinating evil, betrayed virtue, wacky comedy, whatever, in whom we can invest our emotions. For me, there is not a character in this film of such a stature.
Read the rest of my review of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy at Huffington Post Entertainment.
I read every word of these stories (Little Bridget And The Flames Of Hell), not through professional obligation but through genuine enjoyment, engagement, admiration of Terence Clarke's mastery of the craft...I was literally moved to tears by some of these stories, transported by all of them into a world of Irish nuns, immigrants, mad poets, white-collar workers, errant priests, lawyers with, of all things, a heart... When I first got into publishing thirty-five years ago, it was with the hope of publishing literature of this integrity, rendered with such skill and bigness of heart.
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—Malcolm Margolin, Heyday Books
About Terence
Mercury House and Ballantine Books published three of my novels, all to high critical praise. My latest novel A Kiss For Señor Guevara was published in July, 2010. A collection of stories titled Little Bridget and The Flames of Hell was published this...
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Pride and Prejudice, Heart of Darkness, Great Expectations, Memory of Fire trilogy, Love In The Time Of Cholera, The Collected Stories of Gabriel García...
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I wanted to like the film
Your review is spot on, and one point in particular nails it: "There has to be in every story at least one character for whom the reader or viewer really cares." Not only didn't I care for anyone in it, but the first half of the film, I wasn't clear what the action was about. I didn't know what I was rooting for.
Contrast that with the film I saw yesterday, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," which also used minimalistic scenes, but I knew the goal, and I found the film highly involving.
TNKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY
I haven't seen this movie yet... but, I will certainly be armed with your insights when I do go to see it.
Thanks for sharing your feelings of ambivalence.
I, too, will be able to compare it to, 'Girl with the Dragon Tattoo', which I have seen and really was engaged by.
Although, I am wondering, Christopher, which movie you were referring to...the American English remake or the original German version.
I haven't seen the remake yet.
And, I'm not so sure that I want to.
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