Tomas Alfredson Speaks 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy'

This weeks see's a slew of new releases, one of which will be Tinker, Tailer, Soldier, Spy from director Tomas Alfredson.  Starring the enigmatic Gary Oldman and based on the psy thriller novel by John le Carré.  Alfredson speaks candidly about his success (and tribulations) with the international/mainstream vampire film Let The Right One In and how that brought him his latest film.

His "coming-of-age" horror vampire hit is personally a favorite of mine from the last decade and it's truly something special when compared to the teen-lusting of Twilight.  Having directed the adaptation of John le Carré's classic novel, Tinker, Tailor, "about a retired British operative (Gary Oldman) called back into the clandestine world of MI6 to flush out a Soviet double-agent.  Like his previous film, Alfredson's latest is another chilling evocation of period -- this time an oppressively drab London in 1973 -- and features a performance by Oldman so meticulously insular it's quite unlike anything the actor's done before."

Rotten Tomatoes spoke with Alfredson about the movie:

How did you arrive at Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy?  I'm guessing you would have been offered a lot of horror films after the success of Let the Right One In.

Tomas Alfredson: [...] The making of Let the Right One In was very demanding, and in many ways very unhappy, because back home it was a film that nobody would touch when it was finalized.  The distributor wasn't interested; the theater owners didn't believe in it; the financiers disappeared.  It was sort of put away in a cupboard for 10 months, so it was like...  I thought I did a flop.  And I loved it; I had invested so much time and love into it, so I was so disappointed about that.  And then it started -- before it actually opened in Sweden -- it was shown in festivals here and there, and the success story of it started.

So I was very confused by that.  I read hundreds of scripts [afterwards], but they didn't really interest me.  Then one day, this.  I think it was my manager that heard that Working Title, the production company, had retrieved the rights to Tinker Tailorand, oh, I remember those gray men [laughs] from the TV series from the '70s -- I thought, "Yeah, that sounds interesting."  And I met with them, and Mr. le Carré himself, and I think that those meetings made me want to do it -- and the material, of course.

Is it true that John le Carré saw Let the Right One In and said "Hire this guy"?

Maybe! I have to ask.  John le Carré is a very open-minded person, and he's very updated.  I don't know any 80-year-old guy who is so updated with everything.  He reads everything.  He's informed.  He has the telephone number to anyone.  And he sees everything that's presented in theaters and on television.  But I haven't asked him.

There's a similarity to the secretive, almost suffocating worlds of the main characters in Let the Right One In andTinker Tailor -- is that a dimension of stories that appeals to you?

I think it's people who look differently on the outside to how they look on the inside -- that's what interests me; and I think, maybe, that is a description of myself in many ways.  It's quite hard to describe why you want to do something.  It's just something that happens.

[...]

What's your personal relationship to this British espionage world?  You were growing up in Sweden at the time the movie is set.  What are your memories of the Cold War?

Well the espionage world I don't know anything about, except the things you've seen on TV, but we were very close to the Cold War and we lived even closer to the Iron Curtain.  Sweden was a very strange mixture of this social democratic rule and old feudal monarchy, so there are a lot of cultural connections to the British in many ways, in what kind of history we had in the feudal system -- which is very unmodern, but still, it's there.

[...]

You seem to have a gift for capturing the essence of time periods without drawing attention to them.  What's the trick?  Not emphasizing very obvious period details?

Yes.  It's like, it's too easy to put sideburns on everyone and play hit records, you know -- all those cheap ways into the hearts of people.  I think the period was so much about, not '73, as this is set in, it's about the '60s and '50s and '40s -- all the periods before that.  Because if you would visit someone in a home in 1973 there would be one chair that was bought last year and the rest would be stuff from the '40s or the '50s.  Too often people always sort of push the volume to 10 when they're doing period stuff.  But, it's of course a lot of fun to do it, and revisit -- especially if you have experienced it yourself.  I have very clear memories myself.  I visited London for the first time when I was seven or eight, in exactly those years.

[...]

Slight spoilers ahead for a particular segment that gives culture insight to the film instead of plot.

There's quite a distinctive shot in the film with graffiti on a wall reading "The Future is Female," which stood out for me in the context of the movie.  Was it a reference to anything?

Yeah, it was Maria [Djurkovic], the production designer, who's a fantastic person and a fantastic designer.  We had this big wall down there and we wanted to do something with it, and she made some graffiti.  [Laughs] I thought the line was beautiful; a very nice statement.  I know that the art department people were quarreling about it.

Really?  It was great because the film is so entrenched in this hermetic, masculine world and then all of the sudden there's this weird flash of lighting from the future.

Yes!  I love it.  I thought it was brilliant.  [Laughs]

You can read the interview in its entirety here.  Here's the trailer for the film:

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is directed by Tomas Alfredson.  Starring Gary Oldman, Colin Firth and Tom Hardy.  The film opens in limited release 9 December, 2011.