The Last Movie I Saw

A lot of people think of the early 1970s as a kind of golden age for Hollywood movies, a period of immense artistic accomplishment, largely driven by a bunch of "Young Turk" filmmakers who were unconstrained by longstanding traditions (guys like Francis Ford Coppola, Marty Scorsese, Bob Rafelson, Brian DePalma, Monte Hellman, and a bunch of others). Movies of that era were often marked by a gritty look and cynical themes-- very much a reflection of the times, when most of the various sixties dreams were crashing in real life. After Jaws and Star Wars, the industry took a turn, embracing shallow commercial values over artistic expression, and evaluating quality in terms of opening weekend grosses (an oversimplification, sure, but not inaccurate). Good movies still got made of course, but it really didn't seem like Hollywood was interested in promoting the kind of talent that emerged in the seventies, nor giving filmmakers the kind of free rein they seemed to have back then in picking their projects. The reason why I bring that up is that I've been trying to think of a movie of the past few years that so directly draws on that early seventies model as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, both in its look and its message. It's directed by Tomas Alfredson, a Swede apparently making his first English language movie, and it would've fit right in with the likes of The Conversation (Coppola 1974), The King of Marvin Gardens (Rafelson, 1972), Charlie Varrick (Don Seigel, 1973), The Parallax View (Alan J. Pakula 1974), just to name a few. Visually, it's grainy and dark, befitting its plot of duplicity and deception in the highest levels of the British intelligence service. To be honest, I found the narrative much too convoluted to know for certain what was happening with every twist, but that seemed secondary to grasping the ultimate message that no one should be trusted. In fact, the point seemed to be that the whole spy business is largely predicated on generating suspicion where none necessarily is warranted-- a condition that is exploited by nearly everyone, more in pursuit of private gain than out of some sense of national interest or ideological purity. Gary Oldman is outstanding as George Smiley, the one character who seems to maintain some kind of moral foundation, though his motives too are open to interpretation. I should mention that the story is set in the seventies, when the Cold War was still the central fact of international relations, so it was appropriate for Alfredson to adopt the look of movies from that generation. It's certainly good enough to inspire imitators, but let's hope they embrace the general aesthetic of that earlier generation and pursue originality and not just the style evident in Alfredson's film.