Event Film and Video Screenings Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011)

TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY (Karla Films – Paradis Films – Kinowelt Filmproduktion / Focus Features, U.K./France/Germany, 2011). Directed by Tomas Alfredson. Screenplay by Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan, based on the novel of the same name by John le Carré. With Gary Oldman, Kathy Burke, Benedict Cumberbatch, David Dencik, Colin Firth.  (128 min, color, widescreen, 35mm print from the Copyright Collection, rated R). 

British spy George Smiley comes out of retirement to track down a Soviet agent within the U.K. foreign intelligence service. The first screen version of John le Carré’s 1974 bestseller, the 1979 BBC-produced TV series starring Alec Guinness as Smiley, was a hard act to follow: over the years it has been consistently praised as the best adaptation of a le Carré work, with Guinness singled out as the definitive incarnation of George Smiley. It is therefore a tribute to Swedish director Tomas Alfredson, the husband and wife writing team of Bridget O’Conor and Peter Straughan, and actor Gary Oldman, that their 2011 big screen adaptation was a critical and box-office success. Economically scripted and tightly paced, with an atmospheric and austere 1970s look, the film is, in the words of critic Peter Bradshaw, “a weightless, slo-mo nightmare taking place in what looks like an aquarium filled with poison gas instead of water.”

Seating is on a first-come first-serve basis.  Doors open at 6:30 pm.