Movie weekend continues

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is exactly how you should do a book-to-movie adaptation. I really love the book and I'm mildly obsessed with Le Carré, so I was kind of on tenterhooks about how they'd pull it off. (Before you ask, nope, never seen the miniseries. Heard it was good, though.)

They pulled it off. While some of the plot is condensed, it's in no way dumbed down, and the film is every bit as subtle and understated as the book. The casting is so note-perfect that I could figure out who everyone was before they said their names, and it genuinely felt like it was made in the 70s with the Cold War still raging. There's no attempt to decode the dialogue or make it anything other than a story where espionage largely amounts to tense scenes of people talking. You know, until they die in horrible ways. The atmosphere is one of slow-building paranoia and it totally works.

Also, apparently 1970s British spies had the best Christmas parties ever.