- THEY CUT ALL OUR FAVOURITE LINES. The hell! "We sat there like a pair of schoolboys making up a code," "positively SEETHING with goodwill," "Connie's little hunch has turned up trumps," "let me sweat the bastard," and not just that but everything dramatic -- the moment when Smiley forces Jim to realize someone in the Circus betrayed him, or when the other four are faced with Haydon's betrayal, or, my favourite example of this, when that worthless guy is telling Control how Jim has been shot and possibly killed, the director pulls away to a long shot making John Hurt, the most heartbreakingly expressive actor of his generation, a little blob in the frame. They changed the great homely little detail of the two milk bottles! Why? Was milk no longer delivered in Britain in the early seventies? which leads us to
- updated to 1970s Britain whyyyyyyy.....not only was it actually less drab then, but OMG everyone is in horrible clothes. (Yes, I am shallow. Cumberbatch's HORRIBLE red/blond dye job distracted me mightily.) The miniseries (yes this is going to be a "it wasn't the miniseries, I am appalled" post) managed to make everything look gaudy yet shabby, the ultimate of cheap -- apparently just by filming a number of scenes in the contemporary Beeb offices, heh. It's like the Pappian villainy of putting Measure for Measure in the Old West, or somewhere equally irrelevant. The people in this story are so intertwined with the era they're in, putting the postwar generation in a post-EEC, post-Watergate, post-Vietnam setting makes no goddamn sense.
- the actors were all good, great even (well, jeez, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Ciarán freaking Hinds), but it was almost like they had nothing to do -- when all the best dramatic moments weren't gutted (see above) they were filmed really ineptly (see above). Genuine drama was replaced with cheap violent diversions. Did we really have to see a nursing mother shot in the head, and Irina beaten up (twice) and then also shot in the head? Really? And this film trimmed down all the women's parts so Connie had hardly any lines, which was a crime, and we never even saw Ann, which was just stupid.
- everyone CRIED. All over the place. I thought the Brits were supposed to be stoic. You would have thought these guys had just gotten word of Princess Diana's end.
- the writers betray the Jim/Roach relationship totally ("Go and play with other boys and be normal!", THE SHIT)
- Really the difference in the two versions is utterly shown up when Haydon protests that he got Jim out, and Smiley says "Yes, that was good of you." There's no indication of how he feels in the book. Oldman says it in a very good, musical, cutting way. Alec Guinness says it with a tiny beat ("That was - good of you") and there's a wealth of contempt in that little pause, that lets you know just what he thinks of Haydon's betrayal and self-deception and lies and refusal to face any kind of truth, and he does it with a pause. It is one of the most devastating examples of irony I've ever seen.
As usual Anthony Lane says it better:
Here’s the strangest thing: the television series, lasting more than
five and a quarter hours, was bovine of pace, often ugly to behold, and
content to meander along byways that petered out into open country or
led inexorably to dead ends, yet I was tensed and transfixed by every
minute, like a worshipper at a familiar Mass whose mystery will never
abate. The new version, by comparison, feels purposeful, unbaffled,
artfully composed, and lit, amazingly, with hints of jocularity. (There
is even a Christmas party at the Circus; imagine what Guinness would
have made of that.) But something in the drama has been dulled, and I
was almost bored.
("worshipper at a familiar Mass whose mystery will never
abate" -- that's a pretty damn beautiful description of how any good work of art continues to hold us, its rewards inexhaustible.)
descensus Averno facilis est