I’ve watched Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
twice now and I’m still not sure I understand all of it. The story, at least in its broad strokes, is fairly simple, but
structurally it burrows into little pockets that are sometimes hard to
untangle. The film moves not like a river but an octopus at the bottom of the sea; you sense the
overall form sliding along, but you can’t always follow the individual tentacles. And
yet, I can’t tear myself away from it.
