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From: donn@utah-gr.UUCP (Donn Seeley)
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: Re: The Little Drummer Girl
Message-ID: <1221@utah-gr.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 27-Oct-84 05:36:01 EST
Article-I.D.: utah-gr.1221
Posted: Sat Oct 27 05:36:01 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 29-Oct-84 02:35:42 EST
Organization: CS Dept., University of Utah
Lines: 60


	From Ian Kaplan :

	I recently saw the movie and it is even better than the book. ...

Someone else made the same comment to me, so I went to see the movie
myself.  But I was disappointed...  Time and Newsweek magazines split
evenly on the movie, one giving it a rave and the other dismissing it
entirely.  Clearly people are seeing different movies.

*** SPOILER WARNING ***

Unlike the magazine reviewer who disposed of the movie, I did like the
book -- my objection is that (as is all too common) the movie lost the
spirit of the book.  The movie felt like a version of the book with all
the depth stripped from it.  The central character of Charlie, the
unsuccessful actress and lukewarm revolutionary, was changed beyond
recognition (so I thought).  No longer an Englishwoman, she's now an
American; no longer unsuccessful, she's getting parts in commercials
and (unbelievably!) playing the female lead in English plays; no longer
punishing herself for not having good class background by sucking up to
loathsome boyfriends, she seems clean, wholesome, sane; no longer poor
and embittered, she's well off enough to afford coordinated designer
outfits; and worst, Diane Keaton just does not give the impression of
being a pathological liar like Charlie.  Keaton's Charlie is missing
the necessary moral vacuum.  When le Carre's Charlie finds out that her
diary and correspondence have been forged, she flies into a rage and
nearly wrecks the project; Keaton's Charlie just laughs at the idea.
When the Palestinians press on le Carre's Charlie, she screams and
complains and lies like mad; Keaton's Charlie is stoic.  Le Carre's
Charlie is empty, yet terribly afraid of emptiness, and welcomes a
chance to play in 'the theater of the real' because it gives her a
purpose, a place, a role; Keaton's Charlie is self-assured and
occasionally brash, never lonely or alienated.  I could go on...  I
don't want to imply that Keaton is really at fault here, just that she
is wrong for the part.

The plot in the novel was more than a bit contrived, but it was
held together by subtly anchoring all the points that were loose.  The
movie simply drops all the background material.  Where are the scenes
in which Kurtz and Litvak butter up friends in German intelligence, or
pretend to be Hollywood directors to Charlie's agent, or coax a
reluctant British officer into cooperating, or argue with superiors
about invading Lebanon, or engage Gadi Becker to return from
retirement?  It was a brilliant idea to get Klaus Kinski to play Kurtz,
but unfortunately the movie's Kurtz is nowhere nearly as important a
character as the novel's Kurtz, and Kinski is wasted.

There are some good points about the movie -- the minor characters are
well done (especially the psychopathic Helga), the action scenes are
carefully enacted (the opening in particular is very nice), and the one
new plot twist (the identity of Khalil) was a clever idea.  Perhaps
I've just been spoiled for movies of le Carre novels by the BBC
adaptations of TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY and SMILEY'S PEOPLE, which
I thought were amazingly well done...

I sure hope Hollywood doesn't get its paws on THE HONOURABLE SCHOOLBOY,

Donn Seeley    University of Utah CS Dept    donn@utah-cs.arpa
40 46' 6"N 111 50' 34"W    (801) 581-5668    decvax!utah-cs!donn