Three Films Make A Post: They couldn't leave dead enough alone.

Hombre (1967): I know I’m pretty much alone with this opinion, but to me Martin Ritt’s sort-of revisionist Western is the exact opposite of a success. I’m perfectly okay with message Westerns (and pretty much on board with the message here) but in this case, the message seems to overwhelm the Western and the characters, with everyone seeming to act the way they do because they need to for the film to make its point instead for reasons of character psychology. The acting is consequently once removed from the characters and much too consciously “acting” for my tastes, everyone (except Diane Cilento) tending to stiffly declare the film’s too-clever (as in, “more interested in being quoted and admired than in being dialogue, or actually all that clever”) lines. Add Ritt’s direction with its lack of dynamic bordering on leadenness, and you have a film that does not work for me at all.

The Adjustment Bureau (2011): Speaking of films where my low opinion is less than the majority vote, here’s George Nolfi’s romance based on a Philip K. Dick story featuring Matt Damon as a character directly out of a Frank Capra film (complete with vague pseudo-politics and Salt of the Earth bullshit) and Emily Blunt as a woman who never gets the slightest bit of agency from a movie that’s all about more or less sinister forces robbing Damon’s character of all agency (and no, the film clearly doesn’t see the irony there). There’s a true deus ex machina ending that doesn’t fit anything that came before philosophically, a lot of exposition of relatively simple ideas, bog standard romance bits I’ve seen done much better in films that pretend to be much less ambitious, and quite a bit of running around. It’s certainly not a horrible film, but if you want to see a romance actually keeping in spirit with the best of Dick, you’re much better off watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, even though that one is not actually based on a Dick story.


The Station Agent (2003): This film by Tom McCarthy on the other hand is a wonderful example of US independent filmmaking. A quiet and unassuming film about loneliness and the walls someone has to build around himself because he’s born slightly different, and too many people suck, this never loses itself in nihilism or kitsch. Instead, there’s sadness that feels like the sadness of actual people, a wry, warm humour tempering quiet desperation, and a deeply human sense of hope. All this is created through McCarthy’s calm and thoughtful direction and writing as well as through brilliant performances by Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson and Bobby Cannavale. Well, and through the shared knowledge that trains are indeed awesome.

In short: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965)

Over the years, we have been quite lucky with the overall quality of John Le Carré adaptations, on TV as well as on the big screen. Martin Ritt’s film is the first of them all, and might very well be the best, though that’s a matter of personal taste as much as of the film’s quality.

To me, it certainly is the bleakest of them all, and therefore the one closest to the soul of the Cold War. Like all of the Smiley novels and films, The Spy is – and I think I’m repeating myself here – a film about all sorts of betrayal, betrayals of country, belief, loved ones and oneself, of betrayals crushing characters who are more often than not traitor and betrayed at the same time. The Spy in particular is a film about people – especially of course Richard Burton’s Alec Leamas who has the eyes of a man who has seen and done profoundly horrible things - who reached the point where telling themselves they do all the shabby, horrible things they do out of necessity and for some greater good just isn’t enough anymore but who are ruined for anything beyond these things by all that they’ve done and seen. Of course, and not surprisingly, any remnant of normal human feeling they still carry is exactly the thing that gets them killed, or, worse still, getting the people killed who still carry ideals which aren’t built on betrayal. At its core, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a film of people maimed, and rather more often crushed, not so much by the forces of history (that would be too friendly a thing to be crushed by) but by powers that have long divorced themselves from any moral except of the moral of expediency; actual moustache-twirling evil would also seem a much preferable thing to be crushed by.

It’s the world of international espionage as a kind of cosmic horror of the soul, realized by Ritt in a calm, unspectacular manner that makes the resulting film all the more horrible and weighty. The abyss, it turns out, is not a place of dark magic, but of the greyness of the everyday.

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