It's that precise quality that lends such an indelible reverberation to Oldman's Smiley, the hero of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Among a cast that includes excellent British stars and character thesps including Colin Firth, Toby Jones, John Hurt, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ciaran Hinds, and Tom Hardy -- the deepest bench of the year, one could argue -- Oldman moves quietly and deliberately with the deceptively difficult task of conveying emotion, cognizance, and menace in a character who betrays nothing to those around him. Oldman's Smiley is, in effect, the most discreetly badass spy in the history of spy movies.
Movieline sat down with Oldman to talk Tinker, his instant adoration of director Alfredson, listening to raconteur/co-star John Hurt's great on-set stories, growing mellow with age, the joys of being part of The Dark Knight Rises, and the lure of returning to George Smiley in a Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy sequel.
How much familiarity did you have with the book and the previous dramatic adaptations before Tomas Alfredson's film project came to you, and how much did that familiarity affect your decision to take on the part?
Well, I knew of the books, I'd read the books and watched the TV series back when in '79. I remembered them. It was a big thing, a big deal back then; it was the real beginnings of long form TV, which we're so used to now, but it was a unique thing back then. So I knew Smiley and thought, 'This is a great opportunity.' And then I met with Tomas very briefly for breakfast and he was describing one of the scenes that I think just speaks of the character of Smiley: When they're in the car and he lets the bee out of the car. It's a little vignette, a little silent scene, but it says a great deal about who he is.
What gave you confidence in Tomas's vision for the film?
Tomas's take on the material... he's an original piece, Tomas. He's unique; he talks about color in terms of smell.
How so?
He wanted to capture the smell of damp tweed in the color palette. He's an unusual guy, and I liked him instantly, really. As Tomas has said, it was kind of love at first sight. We met and we talked for an hour and then I got on the phone to my agent who'd set the meeting up and he said, 'How'd it go?' I said 'I adore him!' I could easily spend 12 weeks in this guy's company. Have you met him?
No, I haven't! But I loved Let the Right One In. There's a scene in Tinker that moves so exquisitely: Smiley is piecing the puzzle together in his mind, in his memory, and Tomas intercuts that with a visual of train tracks clicking into place.
Yes, where it all kind of connects. And even in the safe house at the end, when we're zeroing in on the mole, there's a scene where I'm listening. I'm eating the mint and just listening. I said to him, 'But you'll shoot the usual feet going up the steps, the hand ringing the door, the guy arriving, all of that...' And he said, 'No. I'm just going to shoot it on a close up of you, and I'll use sound effects.' I said, 'Surely you'll shoot some of that and cut back and forth...' and he said, 'No.' He was very clear in his vision.
Is that unusual, while you're shooting a scene, to have such a specific idea of what the finished, edited scene will look like?
Yeah, and it helps. I can't think of any other director that would have used "La Mer," by Julio Iglesias, a very rare recording of him singing. It was his idea of opening up a window, that we've been in this rather stuffy, claustrophobic world, and it was almost as if you opened a window at the end. But he played that for the actors so that Colin [Firth] and Mark [Strong] had the soundtrack when they were playing the scene.
I loved their storyline; the element of the love between those two characters was beautiful.
And we don't really know the nature of their relationship. It could have easily been sexual, it could have been just a crush. It's never really explained. Have you read the book?
I haven't, but I suppose it all goes back to Le Carré's original work. How much did you find the book helped you, or having seen the miniseries?
The book's fantastic. The miniseries is the book, seven hours, and it's line for line, word for word. Pretty much the entire book. But it's lovely, the way it's structured. At the end Smiley reminisces about [character name redacted] in the last third of the book, after he's gone and he's gone to see the girlfriend and gives her money. As he's walking away, you're with him in his head and he's thinking about him and there are beautiful passages in it. It's a beautifully-written book. I'd recommend reading the book, and then if you can be bothered then see the series which is very, very well done.
So you found Le Carré's book essential.
For everything. And even when scenes are reduced to a composition, and four lines and a look or something, you always came in with the book, your life. It was the subtext that you brought into the room. So if a scene started in the middle, the book always sort of supported you.
This is a very quiet film, in that there are so many scenes with very little dialogue or it's all in a look, a glance. And here you had such a great, deep cast. Could you feel that energy in the room, with each person bringing in their character's history, in the room while a scene is happening?
[Smiles] Yeah. You could feel that. It was a very present, very focused, quiet set in that respect. [Pauses] We had some laughs, though. The lovely John Hurt is a great storyteller.
What kinds of stories did he have?
He's just lived a life! He's lived such a sort of interesting life, and has worked with so many wonderful people, so he would just start to tell stories about other actors or people that he's met over the years. We were once hanging out and we had about an hour to kill so he came to my trailer and we had lunch, and he was telling me what it was like to work with Richard Burton. Just a great raconteur and a nice man, John.
Do you find you're like that yourself, on set with younger actors?
Well, the more life you've lived the more you have, I guess. The memories and experiences to share. Especially with younger actors who are coming up and it's all happening for them, in that respect. I look at Tom Hardy and I remember being there, in that moment.
Speaking of Tom Hardy, you've worked quite a bit with him of late - or at least have been on the same projects.
Yes -- not physically worked with him, but obviously in Tinker... and then on The Wettest County in the World, and of course Batman. Yeah. It's been the year of Oldman-Hardy. He's a nice guy. He's a talent, Tom.
On the subject of older generations mingling with younger ones, and since one of the themes of Tinker is aging, in a sense, do you feel you've had an unusual perspective with the concept of age, given your surname?
I was always teased! [Pauses] Once, I spent some time in Jamaica as a kid and we were with this guy who was driving us around, he was a friend of my mother's. I only knew him as Uncle Harold, that was his name. It was the first time I'd been abroad, and it was such an exotic place to be. Of course it was very influenced by America, and there were a lot of cars - there were Buicks, and Cadillacs, and he had this rather beautiful powder blue mid-60s Cadillac. There was a boy thumbing a lift on the roadside, and we stopped to pick him up. His name was Gary Newman. It's a true story! [Laughs]
Was it the Gary Numan?
It was not the Gary Numan, but it was Gary Newman, that kid. I'll never forget that. But now I'm growing into my name.
Do you feel that, after playing so many extroverted characters in the past, you at some point began seeking out a change of pace? Smiley is so understated, so contained.
He is that, and you're somewhat guided by and restricted by the material that you're working on. He is written like that, so that was a given. But it's nice to play... I've been asked to do my fair share of crazy characters that sort of come in and have to just emotionally burn - it's what I call 'burning from the first bar.' It's like rock 'n' roll. Smiley is jazz. You find your way. You find your solo. And I'm happy to play it, now. You get older and you mellow. Not that you can't play those kinds of characters, but I've done enough of them. There's talk of doing Smiley's People, which is the third book in the trilogy, so they're considering making it, with Tomas.
Interesting -- I thought of Tinker as How Smiley Got His Groove Back, since we see him come full circle by the end, back in the saddle.
Yeah, it is. It's temporary; he's only really there to tidy things up, put things back in order. And then he slips back into retirement again.
What appeals to you about returning to Smiley again?
I love his observations. He's like an owl, like a wise old owl. He listens. He can see everything. He's the smartest guy in the room. He's good for my blood pressure.
Like doing yoga?
Yeah! It's like coming into work and you're in a scene and you don't have to rush it. [Sits back serenely, a la Smiley] You know, Tom Hardy's getting all emotional and doing all the work for me and I just quietly sit there in the chair and sit back and say, 'Tell me what happened.' [Laughs]
And you've already done your high blood pressure roles.
Yeah, I've done those. So I look at some of these younger guys and think, I was there. Rather you than me. Not to sound old!
Not at all. Tom Hardy once compared the Dark Knight franchise to a Starbucks, which I suppose is to acknowledge that it's a mainstream attraction that is everywhere and ubiquitous. How would you describe the franchise?
Well really, they are all individual films. They're all linked and connected, and there's an arc there over the trilogy. But there are such spaces in between. I never saw it quite like... I don't quite know what he meant by that. I guess you are in a movie that, even lovely Matthew Modine said to me, 'It's such a relief that you're in a movie that people are going to go see.' You know that millions of people are going to go see it, and there's an expectation, anticipation for it. But they were all their own movie. So you'd do the first one and you had two or three years off, then you did the second one and had three years off, over eight years or however long it's taken. So I saw them as their own experience. And they're like any other movie, really. They have a little more money than other movies, but Chris [Nolan] doesn't work any differently on the Batman, I think, than he would on Memento. But it promises to be very... I'm intrigued to see it. I'm intrigued to see this one.
Do you have less of a sense of what the end product will be than you did with Tinker?
Less with Tinker, because you never really know. We all went in thinking we had something special, we had great material, but the component that was missing was the audience. We didn't know if people would go see it. Then it became very successful in the U.K., and there was an audience for it. But Batman, Dark Knight Rises, is a little different. The audience is there, and in numbers. But I don't think it'll disappoint.
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