[e-mail] Review of Smiley's People

Smiley's People (1982)

Available from Netflix -- It Doesn't Get Any Better than This

[10/10 · 8 July 2006]

If you are a John Le Carre fan, it doesn't get any better than this six part BBC series, available on three disks from Netflix and (presumably) other on line film services. Alec Guiness was a marvelous actor, as we all know, and he may have equaled his role as George Smiley in some film or stage performance. But that is difficult to believe. He is perfect in projecting Smiley's world-weariness, his outward reserve, his deliberate methods and his resentment at having been put out to pasture by the Circus. Bringing Karla over, as he does in the last of the six episodes, is his ultimate triumph and closes the book on a career which his superiors had already seen fit to end -- only to call him back for one last time. Guiness manages to convey Smiley's emotions and mental exertions with utmost physical restraint. A half smile here, a lifted eyebrow there, a nod of the head, a slight hand gesture. He never raises his voice, engages in no histrionics -- and yet it's all there in front of you, art in apparent artlessness. John Le Carre has written some excellent novels since the end of the Cold War but the Cold War was his subject, and the search for Karla is his epic. I'm inclined to doubt that any film could do justice to this complex novel -- or that any living actor could come within miles of Guiness's subtle performance.