Something that has always been of great interest to me is the handling of, and interaction with, secret and clandestine materials. Espionage films, therefore, are a perfect fit for me! People who are willing to subvert and corrupt their own selves, often at great personal or material risk, for what they believe to be a greater cause, or the well-being of place or ideal, suggest a conviction that, while not always ideal, is certainly interesting to see the motivation behind it. Of course, when these convictions are turned upon the institutions that foster them, such as in this film, the integrity, the true value, of those ideals are really put to the test - is it worth attacking the very institutions that are designed to foster your ideals in pursuit of those ideals? Sometimes, however, in order to save the ideals, the institution needs the attack. And so, throughout the course of this film, the forces of British intelligence go to war over what represents the best way to save Britain, and how far one must go to save an ideal, which in this case, just so happens to be a nation.
Smiley and Guillam represent, in a way, the British intelligence at its best. Doggedly ideal, well-trained, and, most importantly, able to look outside their own system to see its flaws and successes. Guillam, with his flashes of brashness, takes this image to a rather naive extreme. He is, however, also younger; Smiley’s years of experience shine through. A shame, then, that their hard work and training has to be used to fix their own system; even worse, then, that each suspect works so hard to appear guilty.
The cloud in which these suspects operates is the true indictment in this film; their desire to “get the scoop,” so to speak, has pushed them into complete irrationality and made them lose focus on what is best for their country, as their country is the only ideal. Even in this broken sense of focus, the simpleminded goal of “victory” has broken their ability to see any other ideal, any other moral or ethical standard, and, really, anything outside of total domination of Soviet intelligence. Guillam’s brashness, exemplified when he attacks another spy for, in his mind, deceiving him into spying on other British, is at least driven from a certain set of moral standards; he has to spy on his own countrymen, a sickening thought, and surely one that never crosses through the minds of the suspects of the film.
One of the finest moments in the film, the sequence best expressing the ideological drive of the film, involves Smiley relating a meeting with Karla right after World War II. Karla would become the head of the Soviet intelligence and a constant, if ever-unseen, presence in Smiley’s life, but at the moment of the story Smiley is telling, Karla is nothing, barely surviving in the midst of Stalin’s purges, and a likely target for execution. He explains trying to convince Karla to defect to England, rather than return to the Soviet Union where he will surely die. Smiley tells him,
We’re not so very different, you and I. We both spend our time looking for the weaknesses in each others’ systems. Don’t you think it’s time to recognize there is as little worth on your side as there is on mine?”
The first part of this quotation appears in most of the publicity for the film, but the second half is what is key, and is what resonates, even today. In the shadow of a nationalist escapade in Iraq and Afganistan, the Anglo-American ideals of “freedom” and “democracy” ring less far less true than they did, say, ten years ago. While the popular uprisings around the world from this past year or so are hopeful, they are very different from state-sponsored escapades like the wars of the past decade. Similarly, in this film, “Witchcraft,” a program built out of a desire to “beat” the Soviets, is an overreach; it represents the British to an extreme, where the ideals motivating the act have long disappeared. Like the Soviet side, and like the wars of the past decade, there is little philosophical reason to remain on any one side, because it’s all about “winning” rather than succeeding at the ideal. The ideal itself, at the point that many of these suspects are working, is largely broken from the reality of British life itself; David Bordwell explores in more detail about the class-based aspect to their failure (along with so much more in the film!)
I’ve already mentioned the wars in Iraq and Afganistan; it makes me wonder what a film with a story like this, set in the present day, would look like. There is the amazing The Constant Gardener, and both films are based on novels by the same author, John le Carré. In that film, the menace of corporate greed drives disaster in underdeveloped countries; given the high levels of private contracting in the latest set of wars, how long until we have a film about a corporation making a profit off of goods sold to authoritarian governments at war with “us”? Although I don’t know of one off the top of my head, I’m sure it must exist in some form already.
I think it is a shame, though, that the film ends a simplistic as it does. Smiley wins, and everything goes back to how it should be, with everyone representing the old ways literally or figuratively dead. The ending is unsatisfying because it fails to adequately explain a path to success, instead opting for a simple “everything is good now!” Even though there are no easy answers, something a little more nuanced, or some suggestion that everything was so easily saved, would have sufficed. Even still, the picture it paints of the struggles and sacrifices one must take for one’s ideals, and the failure to check one’s own intentions, is smart, and still relevant. A very interesting piece, for sure.
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