This is, by far, the best adaptation of Le Carre for the big screen, ever. Only the BBC's "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" is in the same league. It also contains what is, for me, the first totally unqualified great performance of Ralph Fiennes. He's always been very good, but nothing he's done before matches this. He does more with less here than anybody has in a very long time. See Fiennes in this and then just try to imagine any of today's box office champ "celebrities" in the same role.
Fernando Meirelles and his screenwriter Jeffrey Caine do something remarkable here: they put the deep emotional responses of a serious reader of the novel on the screen. You have to bring your own emotion to Le Carre; he doesn't tell you how to feel. You have to get there yourself. Here the filmmakers quite literally fill in the emotional gaps in Le Carre's story and create an extraordinary work of art that operates on four or five levels at one time, building to a bitterly cynical and crushingly sad climax that is nevertheless beautiful to behold.
One of the great achievements of cinema in this decade.
Fernando Meirelles and his screenwriter Jeffrey Caine do something remarkable here: they put the deep emotional responses of a serious reader of the novel on the screen. You have to bring your own emotion to Le Carre; he doesn't tell you how to feel. You have to get there yourself. Here the filmmakers quite literally fill in the emotional gaps in Le Carre's story and create an extraordinary work of art that operates on four or five levels at one time, building to a bitterly cynical and crushingly sad climax that is nevertheless beautiful to behold.
One of the great achievements of cinema in this decade.