Tomas Alfredson
La Talpa

London, 1972. Within the "circus," the pinnacle of the British Secret Service, there hides a mole. At least, that is what someone believes and wants to uncover. A spy is killed in Hungary, another, operating in Istanbul, breaches protocol and needs to explain why. A message in the night. Files coming in and out. Code names. So many names. The Russians. The Americans. And, in the middle, the British and Operation "Witch." Someone dies, someone talks, someone investigates.

Describing the details of the plot of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" would be useless and tedious, as we are faced with a classic 70s-style spy film. Based on the novel by le Carré, everything here is the 70s: the setting, the theme, the narrative pace (very slow), the cinematography (with more shadows than lights, just like the story), the shots (many close-ups), and the acting. There is no action scene, the protagonists are mainly bureaucrats, people in suits and ties who dance between files, telephones, telexes, meetings in the dark, and tea appointments. Everything is still and composed, only the information runs. And it runs fast.
Alfredson pays minimal attention to detail and emphasizes small gestures (lighting a cigarette, for example) and small things with extreme care, with the stealth of a spy, one might say. The style is very British and elegant, certainly formal, thanks also to the remarkable performances by Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy, and Colin Firth, who skillfully create characters that appear impenetrable and impervious to common life, which, however, inevitably surfaces here and there, filtered with extreme sensitivity and calmness by the director. The use of flashback can disorient the viewer trying to grasp something of the plot, but, despite the rather intricate knot, in the end, one manages to understand practically everything without having to resort to an explanation in detail (as with B-grade productions).

The film is very slow (perhaps even too much), but it revives a line lost for twenty years and does so with taste and quality, offering two hours far beyond mere entertainment.
For those who wish to dive into a well-crafted puzzle, "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" is undoubtedly a film not to be missed, which, in my opinion, has nothing to envy from the masterpieces of the genre and will soon be rightfully counted among them.