Philip Seymour Hoffman's Last Great Film Role

A Most Wanted Man is an old-fashioned spy story with all too current stakes.  Based on the John le Carré novel of the same title, the characters are weary but dogged — if we like them.  The others….slither.

In his last film, Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a German spy named Gunter Bachmann who acknowledges that he commits acts against the German constitution while trying to keep tabs on and track down potential terrorists.  He is the quintessential John le Carré spy, ever out in the cold, sad, lonely, probably an alcoholic, and dedicated to protecting the world, his contacts, and his own belief in what is just, which is not the same as legal. 

Philip Seymour Hoffman as Gunter  Bachmann.  Photo Credit: Roadside Attractions

The time is now, the city is Hamburg, and it is shocking.  I haven’t been to Germany since before 9/11, but I cannot recall litter except in the vicinity of U.S. army bases, or graffiti anywhere. In today’s Hamburg, both are everywhere.  The light is harsh — the sun doesn’t shine, it glowers in a garish show of illumination without warmth.

Gunther trusts no one in the German political arena and certainly not the American (represented with chilling arrogance here by Robin Wright, her façade clean, modern, even chic). Gunter will use entrapment, extortion, blackmail, cajoling and hugging to get what he wants from the informants he has cultivated into his network.  This is all for the greater good, and he at no time wishes to use violence in his network.  That’s for the Americans.  He will use threats of deportation, he will kidnap and intimidate. He coerces young Jamal (Mehdi Dehbi) to sneak and spy on his own family and mosque, and just how far Gunter expects his network to go is shocking.

Robin Wright as the  American, Hoffman as the German. Photo Credit:  Roadside Attractions.

The tension level is consistently high as we follow the slightest facial expression of each of the driven, intense members of Gunter’s clandestine team:

• Irna (Nina Hoss)
• Maximilian (Daniel Brühl)
• Rasheed (Kostja Ullman)
• Niki  (Vicky Krieps)

Performances are low key, realistic, frightening.  Claire Simpson’s editing carries us along, shocks us, stops us, tosses us forward into the sliced and slivered scenes.  The shots are stark, the lighting cold, the river lifeless.  This is a new cold war and it drains the color out of everything in Benoît Delhomme’s cinematography.

We become part of Gunter’s team, so it is “we” who are following two men — a wealthy philanthropist who may be funneling money to terrorists and a Chechen Muslim who has entered Germany illegally, seeking asylum.  Abdullah, the philanthropist, appears to be suspected just because he’s Islamic.  He is sophisticated, kind, and beautifully played by Homayouin Hershadi.  The other subject of surveillance, Issa Karpov, appears like a homeless person on the brink of a psychotic break.  He is suspected of being a terrorist, particularly since he confessed to committing terrorist acts when tortured by the Russians.  But, as Irna states, who wouldn’t, when under torture by the Russians.  We are all breakable.  Issa (born Ivan) reveals himself extremely slowly in Grigoriy Dobrygin’s searing portrayal.

The Chechen finds refuge with another Muslim family seeking asylum in Germany, a Turkish mother and son.  Another network.  These people reach out to their lawyer, Annabel Richter played by Rachel McAdams, to try to get asylum and make contact with a banker who has something belonging to Karpov.  The lawyer is left wing and idealistic, or she’s just doing the opposite of what her family wants her to do.  She rides her bicycle all over Hamburg but can go to high or low society.  The character and her actions are totally predictable and Ms. McAdams does nothing to make it more.

Rachel McAdams and Grigoriy Dobrygin.  Photo Credit:  Roadside Attractions.

Rainer Bock is chilly as the angry German agent Dieter Mohr, working for an agency that is not clandestine.  To fend off this short sightedness, Gunter even talks to the Americans in hopes of gaining an ally for his longer-term and much smarter intentions.

Willem Dafoe is a well-heeled banker, angry, beautifully dressed even without comparison to the slovenly Gunter.  The banker’s wife sits at home, seen from outside as if on display before floor-to-ceiling windows, dressed for an evening out in a tight sheath and high heels, or perhaps for a photo shoot. She is not going anywhere.  This is a house not a home, an artist’s lifeless rendering of high fashion and just as stiff. Everything’s a pose, roles for the playing in the proper setting. 

Modes of transportation helped delineate character:  Issa came to Hamburg by mass public transportation, Annabel rides a bicycle, Gunter drives an inconspicuous old sedan, and the banker has a beautiful sleek machine that screams “Look At Me!”  One wonders if he’ll change cars at the end of the story.

Willem Dafoe and Philip Seymour Hoffman.  Photo Credit: Roadside Attractions.

Delhomme’s cinematography combines with Sebastian T. Krawinkel’s production design which engenders claustrophobia in both tightly enclosed spaces and open ones with long, empty views.  The images contrast the work done and lives lived in the shadows — Gunter retreats to the underground world of rathskellers — with the not-clandestine German government and the glamorous American meeting in high rise offices and restaurants with plate glass windows and strategic views.  There’s nothing pretty to look at no matter how high. 

Director Anton Corbijn skillfully manipulates us as Gunter manipulates his network and his team.  It’s exhausting.  Corbijn takes his time, lays out the story, lets us come to know his people. We care about them.  This is no typical American thriller.  Occasionally some driving is rather fast, but nothing else.  Except the abrupt ending.  Andrew Bovell’s screenplay (based on le Carre’s novel) is brusque, brisk, and as chilly as the cinematography, lending layers to each individual we meet. 

The actors do finely detailed, subdued work in this subdued world.  Grigoriy Dobrygin’s Issa allows us in as carefully as an abused animal, shaming our assumptions about him.  Robin Wright’s American is that brittle sophisticate, cold as ice, an adept listener with unfathomable eyes.  I recently read an article about le Carré and his ever-growing dislike of America.  Believe it. It’s right there on the screen.

As for Mr. Hoffman.  His performance is so naturalistic, he is so subsumed into the person of Gunter with Gunter’s entire life always alive in him, he becomes Gunter.  Consequently Gunter becomes our representative in the story, his view becomes ours.  We are in Gunter’s head, we become him.  Betrayal of Gunter is betrayal of us.  That is the power of Philip Seymour Hoffman. He is already missed.

The power of le Carré and Corbijn and Bovell is the niggling feeling that the next time you’re in a pub or on a train or getting into a taxi, you will look around you and wonder who’s watching.  Or you should. 

~ Molly Matera, signing off to read le Carré’s novel, which I assume will leave me as depressed as this thrilling film did.

Tinkering With Cold War Espionage

In 1979, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was produced as a seven-part miniseries based on the novel by John LeCarré.  The story is a tangled web, an intricate tale of spies living compartmentalized lives with interwoven personal histories during the Cold War.  A story of this complexity needs that miniseries format.  So this year’s two-hour film version, despite its extraordinary cast and style, falls a bit short in this condensed view. 

The Poster.  (c) 2011 StudioCanal

Absurd as this may be, I find myself describing this feeling the way I would describe whole wheat pasta.  Apparently whole wheat and multi-grain pastas taste like pasta to those who have never tasted semolina.  If you have tasted semolina, you know the taste and texture of whole wheat and multi-grain pasta is just – not wrong, exactly, but not right.  It’s not pasta, that noun must be preceded by an adjective that shows it’s not the real thing.  That’s how I felt about 2011’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  It has strength, suspense, it is skillfully directed and acted and shot.  But something’s not quite there there.

Accepting the fact that two hours is too short a period in which to tell this labyrinthine tale, I like this film.  It starts slowly — it must be twenty minutes before Smiley even speaks — and shows us 1973 London as a dark and dreary place.  This is the Cold War, something that merely influenced life in the far-off U.S., but pervaded every layer of it in Europe. 

Dreary London, dreary Smiley (C)2011 StudioCanal

 What I remember of Alec Guinness’ George Smiley was a reptilian quality.  I haven’t read a Smiley book in a long time, so I cannot recall if the slightly more human Smiley that Gary Oldman gives us is closer to what LeCarré wrote, or not.  Oldman’s Smiley has a great deal going on behind his eyes, already hidden by large eyeglasses.  He sees all but doesn’t let anyone see that he sees. 

The place and the people of this story are the highest echelons of British intelligence in 1973.  These men of MI6 are the spies who survived World War II and decades of the Cold War.  They are tired, they are bitter, they are cynical, and they don’t trust one another any farther than they could throw a circus elephant; but they are bound together as inexorably as soldiers who fight a horrendous battle together and survive – at least part of them survives.

The tension in this boys’ club builds slowly, with each main character in some way introduced.  To tell a tale of spies betraying one another, let alone their country, one most know who these people are.  One of the weaknesses of this short form is that not all the characters of the Circus are clearly drawn.  The Circus, by the way, is a term LeCarré made up for the headquarters and personnel of the spy world.  There are no acrobats there, no trapeze, and no safety nets.  Just secretive, disguised men sporting the costumes of their class and time.

John Hurt losing "Control."

At the opening of the film, the leader of the group is “Control,” played with surly exhaustion by John Hurt.  He sends Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong) on a secret trip to Eastern Europe to bring back a defector.  Secret even from their colleagues at the Circus because Control is sure there’s a mole in their midst selling them out to the Soviet Union.  Already Prideaux’s uncomfortable, and then things go very wrong.  We see Prideaux shot, and soon Control is driven out of the Circus, taking George Smiley into retirement with him.  The remaining members of the Circus are smug, and all of them are hiding something from their closest colleagues. 

Toby Jones plays Percy Alleline, the new leader. He snarls, he’s a ferret of a man, he lashes out fiercely, claws his way to the top of the pile of his erstwhile friends and colleagues.  Jones is great at this, portraying the man with supercilious certainty of his superiority.  Without knowing why, we know better.

Ciarán Hinds plays Roy Bland, the least talkative and least known of the group.  Visually he’s terrific, cold, a British good old boy, and I assume there’s more of him on the cutting room floor.  As it is, Bland is an unsatisfying because undefined character.

Firth as Haydon.  (c)2011 StudioCanal

Colin Firth plays Bill Haydon, cocky, confident, a cuckholding bastard everybody seems to love.  I forecast a Best Supporting Actor Oscar or at least nomination for this portrayal.  He’s so very affable, so very relaxed, so very cunning.

David Dencik plays the odd man out, Toby Esterhase — a man who presumably changed sides whenever necessary to his survival in the turmoil of European politics of the mid-twentieth century.  He is loftily terse with everyone outside the inner circle, yet appears rattled when Control barks at him.

The younger members – not of the inner circle, just the Circus – are Benedict Cumberbatch as Peter Giullam in a solid, sweet, and, in one scene, heartbreaking performance.  Tom Hardy is marvelous as Ricki Tarr.  Tarr is a sleazy guy, with perhaps more heart and honor than anyone gives him credit for, and Hardy is really fabulous in this role, fooling me at every turn.

We see Mark Strong’s Jim Prideaux several times in a charming snapshot of him with Bill Haydon (Firth), a snapshot that seems to give Haydon pain and Smiley ideas.

Cumberbatch and Oldman (c)2011 StudioCanal

Into this boys’ club Kathy Burke intruded back in the day, forcefully and cheerfully, as Connie Sachs.  She’s been with the boys since the war, and she misses those old days, when, as she saw it, the English had a great deal to be proud of.  Clearly she does not think that of England in 1973, and she is “retired” as unceremoniously as Control and Smiley.

Svetlana Khodchenkova is part of Ricki Tarr’s mission, the abused wife, therefore a potential tool for a spy.  Ms. Khodchenkova is strong and vulnerable, giving a memorable performance.

The smallest roles are well executed, and the cast was what drew me to this film in the first place.  These actors and beautifully framed shots are directed by Tomas Alfredson (who directed Let the Right One In, the original version).  Here he directs the screenplay written by the late Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan.  I think all three did good work translating this layered story into a form too short to do it justice. 

Cinematography by Hoyte Van Hoytema is dank, dark, and dismal, but gorgeous, and Dino Jonsäter’s film editing builds tension tersely.

What struck me is that spies live lives of lies, and that therefore the spouses of serial killers can hardly be blamed for not knowing they were living with murderers – surely there are more spies than serial killers in the world, and it’s doubtful their spouses know what those people do, either.

Why did this occur to me?  I think you’ll know if you see the film, which, despite some flaws, I recommend.

~ Molly Matera, signing off, and putting the 1979 Alec Guinness miniseries into my Netflix queue and LeCarre’s novel onto my library list.