(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
The book was ho-hum anyway. Not the best read out there, by far.
It's predictable that they would make this movie into lefty propaganda. I thought the book was actually pretty good - LeCarre is a good writer, as long as you can ignore his political leanings.
And Hollywood wonders why no one's flocking to their product.
It was so-so, slow paced, and anti-climantic, but would have made an OK movie with 90% of the crap cut out.
The only other book in my life with which I had a similar experience was the awful Dutch, the supposed Bio of Ronald Reagan in which Edmund Morris insisted on inserting a ficticious character, his alter ego, throughout the book. This character become more to the story than did RR. Yech!
Debbie Schlussel has a right to her opinion. I just disagree.
Disagree on English Patient that is...Ralph Fiennes was pretty cute in that pic.
"Strangely, the marauders who burned, killed, and raped Blacks in Sudan were not identified as the Arab Muslims that they are in real-life Sudan. "
Logic of modern Hollywood and John LeCarre:
Robert Mugabe, Idi Amin, Mobutu Seseseko, Mengistu Haile Mariam, Bokassa and number of other African thugs who murdered millions of their compatriots were all White imperialists -:))))))) Actually, they were black Africans, but they must have been working for White European or American Imperialists and the Western pharmaceutical companies because no genuine Black African would ever murder or starve to death millions of their own. So they must have been White deep inside (BITTER SARCASM) -:))))
LeCarre hit his high point with bring Geoge Smiley back from his minor role in "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold"
and created one of the finest trilogies on paper, goldstategop.
"Tinker, Tailor...", "The Honorable Schoolboy" and "Smiley's People" are definitely not "Speed Reads". Going slow and paying attention are mandatory, but the journey is definitely worth the trip!
The BBC productions of "Tinker, Tailor..." and "Smiley's People" are equally superb, flawlessly cast and directed!
Thank God, both are available on DVD! I nearly wore out my personally recorded Beta (Yes, Beta!)tapes of both from the 1980s.
A pity that LeCarre never reached that Zenith again.
Jack.
Good one - I third it!! I still remember how I felt when I saw "English Patient" - what is it with the english and their morbid love stories?
You ask can we ever trust the Bear? . . . I will give you several answers at once. The first is no, we can never trust the Bear. For one reason, the Bear doesnt trust himself. The Bear is threatened and the Bear is frightened and the Bear is falling apart. The Bear is disgusted with his past, sick of his present and scared stiff of his future. He often was. The Bear is broke, lazy, volatile, incompetent, slippery, dangerously proud, dangerously armed, sometimes brilliant, often ignorant. Without his claws, hed be just another chaotic member of the Third World. . . . The second answer is yes, we can trust the Bear completely. The Bear has never been so trustworthy. The Bear is begging to be part of us, to submerge his problems in us, to have his own bank account with us, to shop in our High Street and be accepted as a dignified member of our forest as well as his. . . . The Bear needs us so desperately that we may safely trust him to need us. John Le Carré (b. 1931), British novelist. Smiley, in The Secret Pilgrim, ch. 12 (1990).
kinda hard to believe it's the same guy...
Yeah I saw the preview for it when I went to see The Great Raid. At first I thought it was a Michael Moore film. Another hollywierd loser that will end up in the red.
Read "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Tracy Kidder. True story that will make you ask yourself difficult questions about your own priorities.