The father of all secrets: John le Carré’s daddy issues | Hacker News Reader

The father of all secrets: John le Carré’s daddy issues

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72 pointssamclemens22 comments

Often unjustly forgotten among le Carré adaptations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Perfect_Spy_(TV_series)

I really enjoyed the recent adaptation of the Night Manager with Tom Hiddleston.

If you haven't seen it, here's Hugh Laurie telling a story of attending John le Carré's 70th birthday party: https://youtu.be/0es0XnqpXyM?t=1442

As beautiful and powerful as that story was, it is still only my second favourite le Carre adaptation :)

I liked the new thinker tailor more. It had a old school feel to it where they don't spoon-fed you the story and you have to really pay attention to not miss important clues.

They don't make many movies like that any more.

The new Tinker Tailor is legit, but tragically miscast. They had Toby Jones! They had Ciaren Hinds! Either would have been a perfect Smiley. Oldman (at that time) would have been a perfectly good Alleline!

If you haven't watched the BBC Tinker Tailor, you're missing out on the canonical Smiley, though.

Burton's Leamas in Spy Who Came In From The Cold is probably the GOAT though.

I actually liked the casting, it was an unusual and unexpected arrangement but everyone really shined.

BBC version was okay, but felt really low budget. The sound for example was pretty bad for a BBC production.

Farty Slow Horses Oldman could have pulled off a good Smiley, too. But 2011 Oldman? The same year he did Deathly Hallows? Not a chance. Smiley not being like 2011-era Gary Oldman is one of his most important character traits. Also: Toby Jones is fantastic and it would have been great to see more of him.

It was a good movie and true in all other respects to the book.

What I liked about the 1979 TTSS and Smiley's People was that the riddles, characters, and relationships had ample space to be explored properly with unashamedly long, drawn out scenes and side stories. The atmosphere of it is just terrific. I think it's the best piece of television I've watched.

Thing is, that was 10 hours per season. It was a futile task to try and cram that into a film; more so than most series/books because it has a fucking confusing plot. It'd have lent itself better to 2/3 parts - and then onto Smiley's people, which IMHO is even better!

100%. I love this adaptation so much for this reason. The tone is so good.

Having read the book, the big thing I feel they didn’t really convey as strongly was the sophistication of Karla’s “clever knot”. I think that was glossed over a bit.

Granted it’s a pretty subtle thing to depict, even in a film as subtle as this.

Thanks, I was just looking for more le Carré adaptations today! Finished Smiley's People yesterday.

This is a random site but I concur with it:

http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2021/all-9-john-le-carre-movies...

I'm currently watching this. The score is fantastic.

Can highly recommend A Perfect Spy, one of the best books I've read, a bleak masterpiece.

One of the more cheerful Le Carre books is The Russia House, whose two protagonists are well portrayed by Sean Connory and Michelle Pfeiffer. It has a nice 'the foxes who escaped the hounds' flavor to it that is a nice contrast to the bleakness of some of his other works.

It also exposes an unpleasant historical reality: there were quite a few people within both the Soviet and American military-industrial and intelligence complexes who were unhappy to see the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, as it meant they lost their raison d'etre... Looks like they're back in business, though.

And definitely worth a skim,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_le_Carr%C3%A9

I had an odd path to reading Le Carre novels - I first read The Pigeon Tunnel, his autobiography. After that I decided to read all of his novels... and then after the surprise ending in The English Patient, I told my partner I was done with them. I'd guess they're about 50% unhappy endings, 25% happy, 25% unresolved. Then a few weeks later I'd inevitably pick up a new one. All I have left to read now is The Russia House.

Am I missing something? Wasn't English Patient by Michael Ondaatje?

Oops, you're right - I was mixing up my Ralph Fiennes movies. I was talking about The Constant Gardener.

Hardly a secret.

Le Carre's bleak masterpiece "A Perfect Spy" was essentially about his father's impact on his life.

In an interview on the BBC in 1965, Malcolm Muggeridge—himself a former communist and British spy—told le Carré, in a provocative tone, of a friend who survived a World War II prison camp: “He told me the prison slang for a man who confessed was ‘a novelist.’”

Oof!

Was Muggeridge in fact a former communist? He was an enthusiast of the Russian Revolution early on, and his parents and in-laws were socialists, but he was one of not many journalists who told the truth about the famine in the USSR in the 1930s. He worked for British intelligence during WW II, but hardly in deep cover--his Italian opposite number in his overseas posting (in Portuguese East Africa?) knew perfectly well who he was, and was apparently tempted to run him over.

He was pro-communist until he went to live in the USSR in the early 30s and saw what it was like. Thereafter, he was anti-communist.

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