imdb boards: concentrated human stupidity

[kindkit]

I was looking on IMDB trying to find out what kind of car Peter Guillam drives in the film of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (and I never did find out--do any of you know?). The boards are incredibly disheartening. Post after post of "OMG SO BORING" and "Was Peter Guillam gay?" and "Were Jim Prideaux and Bill Haydon supposed to be in some kind of homosexual relationship?". And people not understanding that the Christmas party scenes were flashbacks, which even I got and I am not the greatest at interpreting complex visual storytelling. But I'd have hoped anyone would realize that the presence of Control at the party indicated that it happened before Control died. *headdesk*

No wonder shitty movies make all the money.

Comments

[tree_and_leaf]

I'd have hoped anyone would realize that the presence of Control at the party indicated that it happened before Control died

Yes, you'd think that was a fairly big clue...

[legionseagle]

Well, Lenin was at the party and he'd been dead since 1924, so...(ducks and runs).

And I believe it's a citroen.

[kindkit]

*throws a pink file folder at you*

[legionseagle]

Yes: it was a 1966 Citroen DS 21 (I think the comment in the attached review about Guillam: "He has the movie's most exciting scene, and its closest thing to an action sequence, involving a file room, a luggage tag, and a phone call from a mechanic" was laugh out loud funny.

[tree_and_leaf]

That's why I like Le Carre!

[kindkit]

*nods* One of the things I didn't like about the movie (there were several, although I liked it better on second watching) was the gratuitous amplification of the violence. There are the brutal murders of Thessinger (which didn't even happen in the book!) and Boris (who in the book was taken back to Moscow and shot, not left in a bath full of blood with his intestines hanging out), the onscreen shooting of Irina, plus the absolutely inexcusably melodramatic shooting of the breastfeeding woman when Jim is captured. All of that felt like it had wandered in out of a bad action thriller.

I like the fact that spying in Le Carré's books has absolutely no excitement or glamour.

[(Anonymous)]

The actual fact is, intelligence isn't glamour and James Bond.
Le carre was an intelligence operative and he tells it like it is. He wrote a lot of his espionage books while he was in MI5 and MI6.

My father in law was in British intelligence and that's why he likes le carre's books, ( and accurate adaptions of them ) because that's how it was.