Big screen le Carré

Seeing a lot of cinema this week. Today, my second large screen viewing of the Tomas Alfredson Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy.

A superb film, in every way. Superbly adapted from the book. Superbly photographed and filmed. Superbly made, superbly involving.

And superbly uncompromising in illustrating the truth, rather than the popular fiction, of its world – on which Asimov delivered what is still the best epithet I know:

“His work consisted largely of what the War Department called "intelligence," the sophisticates, "espionage" and the romanticists, "spy stuff". And, unfortunately, despite the frothy shrillness of the televisors, "intelligence," "espionage," and "spy stuff" are at best a sordid business of routine betrayal and bad faith.”

Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire. 1962, London: Hamilton & Co.