Spying for the Patient: A Review of Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy

If you can sit still, I would recommend Tinker, Taylor, Solider, Spy.

The movie is well made, well shot, well acted, and well edited, but for the first 30 minutes of the movie you will be confused. It isn’t necessarily slow-paced, but there is a muddle where many things are happening with little reason. This stems from the fact that the book the movie is based on was 381 pages long. At first this may not sound too extreme; after all, look at the bricks of Harry Potter books and their transition to film. However, the book Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was turned into a seven episode miniseries for BBC in 1979, lasting 4 hours and 50 minutes. The film needs to rush through a couple of things. Besides, the mystery and confusion of being a secret agent during the Cold War dominates the plot, so some confusion is warranted.

            The film starts large with a large, central conflict: someone near the top of the British Intelligence is a mole for Russia. The head of British Intelligence, Control (John Hurt), sends Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong) to Budapest, Hungary to meet with a general who will sell them information about the mole. This opening scene sets up all that we can expect for the rest of the movie. It is fantastically shot; Thomas Alfredson moves through the fascinating city giving both a foreignness and relatable feel to it. But here in the opening scene, things are tense. As Jim Prideaux sits outside a Hungarian café, the tension builds to an unbearable strum. Everything is subtle; the music lightly underscores the sweating waiter, the people at the next table cringing, the old woman in a window staring down at them, and the restrained play between the faces of the two men at the table. The movie forces the audience to play the part of a secret agent, reading faces for clues. Very little information is given easily in this film; everything must be figured out.

Without going too much into detail, the meeting goes poorly. The film lingers in the aftermath, framing a haunting scene of a dead woman holding a crying baby. The film holds no nostalgia for the time frame; though it occurs in 1973, there is none of the stunt-designing to set us there. The time frame is irrelevant, as the story about these men and their actions is what really matters.

            Control dies at the beginning, but a new regime has already taken over the British Intelligence after the blunder in Hungary. They get their information through a suspect program called Witchcraft. This cabal had fired George Smiley (Gary Oldman), the central agent of the story. After Control’s death Smiley is called in to finish Control’s work of figuring out the mole. This opening part confuses one because it can be difficult to tell which parts are flashbacks and what is happening in the present. But the cinematography, done by Hoyte van Hoytema, makes this film worth watching. The inner room of the British Intelligence is bathed in a gorgeous orange, like other safe interior spaces. Hoytema shoots the film in bleak weather, making the reds and greens of these ordinary looking office buildings pop out. We watch the film unfold often outside of windows looking in, because the audience feels separated from the truth in story and the motives of the characters.

After about the first 30 minutes, the plot really starts to unfold. We meet Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy) who reveals the next step forward in the plot and begins the active search for the mole. From this point on, the film is fantastic. It goes beyond the normal spy fare and looks at the consequences of the Cold War and the effects of espionage on normal men. In a breath-taking scene with George Smiley, he recounts his time in British Intelligence trying to convert Soviet agents. With the camera close up on his face, he says, “There is as little worth on your side as there is on mine.”

Oldman plays George Smiley with a brave subtly that amplifies the other actors for most of the film. Tom Hardy, John Hurt, and Mark Strong all give strong performances against Oldman, and Colin Firth comes across as the classic cream of the English douchebag crop. But in before-mentioned scene, with the camera looking only at Oldman’s face, he really shines.

            Tinker Tailor Solider Spy is a fantastic film, and worth waiting through it. But, as warned, the first 30 minutes will be a bit of a blur to be clarified in the last hour and a half.

Job Fair of the Living Dead

Someone should have told me English and Writing Majors shouldn’t go to Job Fairs.

Oh, the opportunities for Business Majors. Every stand wanted Business Majors, wanted them to stop and talk and look at their forms, pick up their cups and highlighters and pieces of candies. And the Science majors made out pretty well. Lots of hospitals and high tech businesses looking for your expertize and know-how. People talked to you and wanted your resume and gave you a business card so you would have contacts.

For English and Writing Majors, there were stands for Graduate Schools. Oh, Graduate School. Stay out of the real world for four more years and rack up enough debt that you have to become a teacher.

None of the stands had any jobs for English or Writing Majors. If I stopped long enough at a stand people would talk to me, see the flimsily attached adhesive badge on my chest proclaiming my name and major, and then give me a sheet about how to look up their information online. Maybe online we have a job that will suit your skills. Come into our stores and do some research online and maybe there will be something for you. Five Times.

I can be a complete social idiot, but I know when I am simply being got rid of.

So that was the job fair for me.

I walked about a not-meant-to-be-so-symbolically-succinct circle, looking at stands and being given sheets of paper and told to move on. Move on so we can talk to that person behind you, the one who didn’t bother to change out of jeans.

Because yes, I was dumb enough to dress up for said event.

Business formal. I had black pants, black jacket, and bright blue button up shirt. I watched myself put on the jacket, the pants, the shirt, the panty hose, and the high heeled shoes like I was having an out of body experience. I knew that person in the mirror was me but I didn’t even feel the clothing go on. It sat numbly on my skin. I was wearing it I suppose, but I couldn’t connect the image in the mirror to myself.

This wasn’t me. I might as well have been one of these people.

And I should have known that it wouldn’t go well. English teaches foreshadowing, and looking back of course it was there (or I could force it there). Walking to my car my heels sunk into every step of the relenting ground, like the earth itself was trying to hold me back. I got my heel stuck in a crack and literately had to take my foot out of the shoe to remove it by hand, all the while two guys (not men, guys) in business suits causally passed me. As I opened the door to John Q. Hammons Auditorium to enter the Job Fair, all of my resumes spilled out across the cement ground. I had been holding my folder upside down the whole time.

And I know I should have tried harder. I definitely should have prepared more. I bought the suit the night before and cut off the tags 10 minutes before I was out the door. And yes, through scrappy hard work and the American dream and the continual practice of these things one day I and blah, blah, blah.

This isn’t a practically encouraging message, but I wasn’t practically encouraged. I know things will work out because things always sort themselves out. That wound will heal and I won’t be able to tell where it was a month from now. But it’s still raw now, and even if I’m just complaining to complain I need to say something about it. Wrap it in a bandage of words so my brain will concentrate on something else. Wrap it too tight so no blood reaches and it simply falls asleep. Let my own words convince me that this Job Fair was at worst depressingly pointless, and at best a training ground and mounted opportunity.

But really, the brain can only focus on one injury at a time, so this was the first scrape that will make all the other cuts hurt less.

Gamers are the Living Dead?

I was not introduced to much technology as a child.

But, eventually puberty. Middle School. High School. College. I osmosised enough. So freshman year it looked like I would be ok. But I made friends, and oh they had video games.

Video games. The only video game I had ever played was Sonic the Hedgehog. At my sister’s orthodontist appointment. Oh, the thirty minutes once a month for about five months. It was glorious.

My friend had a Wii and an X-Box.

Video games are mind-blowing for those unaccustomed. But video games can be daunting to begin. Gamers have been gamers since they popped out. They have cheat codes in their DNA. Games are meant for people who have gamed forever and have their own language of poor grammar and translated catch phrases. My already done growing hands were surely too dumb to play and figure out video games that already have had seven games in the series beforehand.

But there is Bioshock. (Warning: Video is graphic)

Bioshock holds your hand and tells you it is ok you didn’t have hip and with it parents. Bioshock engrosses the new gamer and shows them how to have fun.

The game starts in an alternative version of 1960. Your character sits in a plane reading a note when the plane starts to shake and explode. You awake in the middle of the ocean surrounded by wreckage, and you have to swim to a lighthouse. You enter the lighthouse and the lights rumble on and you see this face.

You descend the stairs and step into what looks like a submarine. And then you see Rapture.

First of all, the game is unbelievably beautiful. I have played new games that came out this year and none of them match the detail, the precision, and the fantastic look of Rapture. It is a city underwater. A city underwater that whales swim through. And, I must admit, I have a soft spot in my heart for the art deco design. Everything is classy and beautiful.

Once you’re in, you’re in. The game takes you step by step how to navigate within the scenery. It has an easy level for beginners, and the easy setting tells you how to do everything. This is how you walk and look around. Here is how you jump over things. Here is how you duck under things. Would you kindly pick up that wrench? Here is how you kill splicers.

Regardless of if you like first person shooters, the story will suck in you. Rapture is a city built by Andrew Ryan, an Objectivism businessman who built a city under the sea to escape the “Parasites” of government and religion, those that live off of and stifle the individual genius. He brought a bunch of geniuses to the city, including Nazi scientists, and let them run wild. There are no boundaries. Science, art, and technology. But things disintegrated and Rapture developed in an apocalyptic dream. Scientists discovered Adam, which enables you to rewrite your genetic code. With Adam you can use Plasmids, which make able you to shot fire, shot electricity, shot out swarms of insects, use telekinesis, and use lots of other amazing powers.

You need Eve to use Adam; it works like a battery you have to inject in your arm. Then you can splice your genetic code and change it into anything you want. But once you start splicing it’s impossible to quit. Rapture is now full of an army of splicers, those who have changed their genetic codes so many times that they are barely human. The society crumbed into a warzone with everyone looking for more Adam for that last fix. And every last splicer is ready to kill you for it.

Of course, there is never enough Adam to go around. So to extract some Adam from the various corpses lying around the battle ground of Rapture, you have Little Sisters: genetically modified girls who can collect Adam from dead bodies. And protecting these precious resources is the Big Daddy.

And that is the backstory. Well, that is a tiny fragment of the backstory. If you look around enough you will find recorded messages giving you the full story of Rapture. And there is plenty of it in the game.

All of this, and I haven’t even gotten to the game play. It works as a standard first person shooter. As soon as you enter Rapture, a splicer tries to kill you. But Atlas, a man you know only as a voice, intervenes and kills the splicer. He says he will guide you through Rapture if you will kindly save his family and help them escape. It is fantastic rush, shooting and shocking an army of splicers across a gorgeous background. And then there is the arsenal littered across Rapture. You hack into and control alarm cameras, machine gun turrets, and vending machines in order to survive. There is action, there are legitimate scares and horror, there are puzzles, there is a mystery, there is art, and there is so much energy and interest.

And then the story has a moralistic question.

You can play good or evil, depending on whether you kill the Little Sisters for a higher amount of Adam or if you save her for a smaller amount. This choice will affect your whole gaming experience and give you a different ending to the story.

So, you have an alternate history 1960’s underwater apocalypse city full of Ayn Rand and George Orwell references where science has run amok turning men into demigods, and you must either try survive large and win everything or struggle and save a few of Rapture’s children.  

I have played both games, the first Bioshock and its arguably superior sequel, at least four times. Each time it keeps getting better. And if they delay Bioshock Infinite, the third in the series, one more time I might just modify my shottie at a Power to the People, hack into a Circus of Value, splice up at a Gather’s Garden, kill me and Big Daddy and harvest the Adam from a Little Sister because I need it so bad.

So, yes, if you need a way into video games start with Bioshock. Just don’t ever expect you will come back out.

Internationalism for the Living Dead

People always say that the world is shrinking with the Internet, but I feel it really reveals the vastness and isolation of our lives. Point, this article from the British Broadcast Corporation about how a Norwegian director, Morten Traavik, discovered a talented group of North Korea Accordionists.

Reread that sentence, then sit, and then reread the sentence because even now it makes my brain want to explode.

First off, Norway is actually allowed to talk to North Korea? For us, North Korea is a dark spot, a spot where our only contact comes from yelling into a megaphone at them from the Demilitarized Zone, only to have North Korea not respond. (Start at 3:00)

 

Yes, by the way, yes that was a 1960s Russian phone that North Korea donated in 1980. That is our idea of North Korea. Crazy old North Korea with starving people in concentration camps and a whole bunch of people marching,

or a bunch of people trained to do things in time with cards.

I mean both are impressive, but neither screams individuality, stardom, or freaking Norway. And this isn’t some traitor to democracy, brainwashed Norwegian. He looks like this:

This is a man who can go into North Korea regularly. A country we have to get images of from space to know what is happening there. And he has discovered accordion stars. Accordion, a German instrument from the mid-19^th Century. North Koreans use it to rock out.

It is like Morten Traavik says in the article, "People [in Norway] are amazed by their skills and also by the fact that you can have fun in North Korea. I think that insight really rocks a lot of people's established preconceptions about the country". In America, our whole view of North Korea stems from a negative place and stays there. And though many of those negative points are valid, it doesn’t leave room for anything else. This is an American point of view. We don’t get to see normal people living their lives in North Korea. All we see is a harsh, Big Brother face.

But if we lived in Norway, maybe we could see something more. Perhaps we could even visit this dark spot on the map where a sense of individual stardom expressed in a YouTube video can still happen. Though the internet gives us more information, so much of it is just static and noise that blurs out a real perception of the world. Sure, you can read news stories about another country, but you still won’t really know what is going on there. Because look at this:

And as much as I want to talk about the empty room or propaganda style landscape or symbolisms of the fake sunflowers, what really is there is talent and joy. For Norwegian pop. In North Korea.

Language of the Living Dead

People don’t expect me to curse.

            It may partly come from the fact that I am never assumed to be my actual age. Working at a movie theater at 18, I learned many customers I assumed I was 14. Last year, when I said I was a junior people still assumed high school. I always have my ID ready at the theaters and, yes, I get the student discount without showing my card.

            But I really enjoy cursing.

            It comes first from a simple love of words and sounds. There are beats and rhythms in the English language that I follow even when I speak joubledy-guck. There are inflections and sounds that are simply more pleasing for a variety of reasons. It’s there in the blessed harshness and conciseness of the word “cunt”.

            “Cunt” is a fantastic curse word because it still has the power to shock. Most of the big curse words, your “fucks”, your “shits”, your “cocks”, and your “assholes”, are rather played out in our numb to existence society. You can do all but the first in some basic cable television shows. However, I have seen regular, sensible men and women gasp in horror at the word “cunt”. Not “cunt” directed towards anyone or anything specific, but just uttered for simple joy of the word.

            But I am not satisfied with your ordinary, everyday cursing. Sure, I can yell “MOTHERFUCKER” when I am halfway through peeling a potato when I need a parsnip, but most cursing has become casual enough to me that 40% of the time I call my roommate “hoebag” instead of her name. So I step it up and Shakespeare that shit.

            I retool my own curse words.

            It is a fantastic hobby, and relatively simple. All you have to do is cut and paste the parts of your normal inappropriate word, or use a curse word in a different part of speech. Fuck to causal for an interjection? Try dick. I regularly just curse, “Ah, dick!” to myself when I forget a textbook for class (people standing nearby who are unaware that curse words can be used interchangeably are often confused). However, interchanging part of speech hardly works for some of your major words. Fuck is a verb, interjection, noun, adjective, and adverb. And some people use it often enough to assume it has reached article status.

            So I make my own. It can be impossible to separate in my own head whether I first heard someone else use it or if I did copy and paste, but I am pretty sure I am the first one to call someone a dickbag. Or a cuntwad. Or I go on a long, windy addition of curse words precariously piled upon one another in a cursing rant. My roommate and I are also currently trying to bring twat back into the regular American lexicon because there is a goddamn “tw” sound at the beginning. That is the really beauty of curse words, I believe. Especially in English, all are pretty much four letter compact bites of tongue tingling fun time. The sounds are so brutal and sharp. All of the c’s, k’s, and t’s really spice up the place.

            Living in a college environment has not helped with my fascination. At least when I lived at home I would curb myself the majority of the time, but in my kid-free adult world there is no stopping me. Which I call my roommate a slutbag and tell her to, “Look at this goddam shit. Seriously, fuck”, I don’t scan the room to see who might overhear. And that’s why cunt will be the first world her parakeet will say.