If you haven't seen the amazing movie
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, I
highly suggest that you stop reading this right now and go watch it.
Seriously. The internet will still be here when you get back.
If you
aren't going to follow my sage advice, here's the basic plot. It's
about the British Secret Service, or Circus, and takes place in the
height of the Cold War. George Smiley (Gary Oldman) is brought back
from retirement to quietly investigate the service and find the mole
that's selling them out to the KGB. Peter Guillam (Benedict
Cumberbatch) is one of the few men he can trust to help him. It's a
hell of a lot more complicated than that in a lot of places, but
basically, that's the plot.
The
thing to remember, though, as you're watching the movie, is that this
is not the first version of this story. Nope, both this and the 1970s
miniseries starring Alec Guinness (from Star Wars,
but he really preferred to be known from this or anything else that
wasn't that "bloody sci-fi drivel") derive from the 1970s
novel of the same name, by John LeCarré. The novel is popular, the
miniseries was successful, but, for me, the movie is where the story
hit its stride.
It's
also where they made the biggest changes, most notably to the
character of Peter Guillam. How? They made him gay.
Except
they never actually said it. Like everything else in this beautiful
film, you have to infer his gayness, based on the information you're
given. Observe.
In his introduction we see Peter both
watch a woman walk away, and then go with Colin Firth's character
(Bill Hadyn) to "check out" the new secretary, Belinda.
This is before we know almost anything about him or what his role in
the Circus is.
Then, later, he comes into the Circus
and has this short discussion with the guard at the desk. At this
point, we really know nothing of Peter outside of work and his
interactions with Smiley.
Guard: "How's the family?"
Peter: "Fine."
Since Peter is clearly in his
mid-thirties, it seems unlikely that the guard would be asking after
his parents. Therefore we can only assume that he is asking after
Peter's wife and children. And the warmth and familiarity with which
he speaks highly imply that he has done so before. Peter doesn't have
a ring on his finger, but since it wasn't uncommon for men in the
1970s to decline to wear a wedding ring, this wasn't unusual. And
Peter doesn't say anything to encourage the notion, he just lets the
guard assume what he will.
Also note in the same sequence how
deftly Peter shuts down the secretary. She fancies him, it's obvious,
and he's a spy. He's established himself as capable of noticing the
smallest things. A woman's regard for him is not beyond his purview.
No, he puts her off because he doesn't want to go out with her,
referring to having to spend his weekend with "visiting aunts."
Why? She's hot, he's hot, and we really have no idea at this point
whether he's married or not. So why the brush off?
No, the real problem becomes apparent
later. As he's leaving Smiley, Peter is told to take care of
"anything [he needs] tidied up." So, we see through a
window as Peter enters a flat. There's a man sitting at the table,
who starts talking the moment Peter walks in. He keeps talking,
though Peter stays silent. And then the scene shifts, and we're
looking at the bedroom. The man is packing. Peter sits at the table,
his face just devastated. The man says a few things about wanting to
know if there's someone else, and being able to handle it, then he
drops his keys and leaves. Peter just cries.
End examination. I think we can assume
from hereon out that in the film, at least, Peter is gay.
But why? It's much, much more common
for a character who's gay in the book to be straightened out in the
movie (or TV show, as seen with Chuck on Gossip Girl).
Why would they choose to make a historically straight character gay?
One
word: drama.
Peter
Guillam's character in the original doesn't have any internal
conflict. He's constantly reassuring himself that even though things
are hard, he can go home and have sex with that violinist he's been
seeing. He thinks at length in the book about how attractive she is.
It's titillating, but not very dramatic. In making the movie, though,
they made the strong choice to give every character, even the more
minor ones, an inner conflict and therefore inner sense of drama.
Even though it's only shown in a couple of scenes, they chose to make
Peter gay because it made his part of the story so much more
compelling.
Imagine
if Peter had gone home to a woman. If she'd smiled, and he'd relaxed.
It would have sucked the tension right out of the movie. Or perhaps
if we hadn't seen what Peter went home to. But then we would wonder
why, and he would be diminished as a character in our eyes, because
we would have seen less of him, and therefore would care less about
him. We need to see what Guillam's hiding in order to trust him. He
wasn't hiding anything before, so we had no reason to trust his stake
in the story.
It
makes Peter Guillam twenty times more interesting. He's a gay spy
back in a time when homosexuality was still illegal, and not too long
after Alan Turing, inventor of the computer and instrumental in
cracking the codes that won WWII, killed himself when he was driven
out of science and intelligence work for being gay. Peter has
everything to lose if his secret gets out, and this makes us root for
him, and even gives a touch of insight into why he might have chosen
to be a spy in the first place. Where better to hide than in amongst
the other liars and cheats, after all?
But
perhaps what I find most interesting about the gaying of Peter
Guillam was how absolutely unremarkable it was. I didn't see it
mentioned in any papers, no articles about it popped up on my
GoogleReader, and Entertainment Weekly definitely didn't do a report
on ways the book differed from the movie with "MAJOR GAY
CHARACTER" at the top of the list.
In
fact, it wasn't until I investigated the book myself that I found out
he was straight in it. I just assumed that if he was gay in the
movie, he was gay in the book. I was a little surprised.
Whatever
their reason for doing so, I'm very glad that the screenwriters
behind Tinker Tailor chose
to go this route, and I think it shows a more nuanced character than
we would have otherwise seen.
I also
think that Benedict Cumberbatch deserved a Supporting Oscar Nom for
his work. But that's probably asking too much. Man hasn't even won a
BAFTA yet.
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WHYYYYYYY? |
I know this is almost a year old, but I just stumbled upon this article, and I felt I had to comment.
ReplyDelete“Peter Guillam's character in the original doesn't have any internal conflict.”
This seems like an almost unsupportable statement. The literary Guillam experiences a kind of nervous breakdown in slow motion because the institution in which he has invested his life is letting him down in spectacular fashion, culminating in this moment:
“A sickening notion had struck him: it seemed so neat and so horribly obvious that he could only wonder why it had come to him so late. Sand was Camilla’s husband. She was living a double life. Now whole vistas of deceit opened before him. His friends, his loves, even the Circus itself, joined and re-formed in endless patterns of intrigue. A line of Mendel’s came back to him, dropped two nights ago as they drank beer in some glum suburban pub: ‘Cheer up, Peter, old son. Jesus Christ only had twelve, you know, and one of them was a double.’”
The conflict Guillam experiences in the film is very much of an external origin. If the story were moved forward 30 years, it wouldn’t come up at all. In the novel, however, the conflict is very much of an internal origin. By allowing an institution to take the place of actual healthy human relationships, he’s completely adrift when it inevitably falls apart on him.
One virtue of this aspect of the story is that, by making the source of the conflict intrinsic to Guillam himself rather than external circumstances, it requires him to grow and change as a character in order to resolve the conflict. Guillam at the end of the book is a much different and emotionally healthier character than at the beginning of it. There is very little evidence, on the other hand, that the cinematic version has changed substantially.
Totallly agree. Well put.
DeleteStumbled into this even later. What was most intriguing to me was that Smiley knew, hence the hint; and that it didn't bother Smiley, despite the history (Cambridge Ring in reality). Hard to think Smiley's Circus had not yet had one homosexual scandal/panic by the time of TTSS.
ReplyDeleteThus, it's also a sign that Smiley is trusting an individual, rather than making dogmatic judgement by type.
-dB
I am so sick of typing in a long comment only to have it deleted because I have to "sign in". Fuck it!
ReplyDeleteVery interesting! I'll definitely have to watch this movie.
ReplyDeleteI'm soo late, but I'm watching the film right now. I had to pause it and check that I wasn't seeing things! I knew the book character was straight so I was a little confused. I think your insight here is so interesting, you're entirely right about it giving just a bit more to his character. Cumberbatch did a sterling job.
ReplyDeleteThanks for writing!
Just seen this movie 3 times in 3 days. I heard about it but somehow never got round to watching it. It's a great movie. Is it any wonder i am reading all the commentary i can find? in 2016 too. Yes i noticed the gaying of Peter Guillam but i have never read the book. It just struck me to double check after the split-up scene and him crying. Great movie great movie.
ReplyDeleteOne point is that with the story being set in the early '70s, it was a few years after the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the UK. However, it would still have been a point of vulerability for someone working in the service because of vulerability to blackmail, so the main point of the article stands. Of course, even without peter, one of the core points of the story is that Haydon and Prideaux were lovers at university and possibly beyond, and that's certainly well known or suspected at the high levels of the Circus.
ReplyDelete(SPOILERS)
ReplyDeleteIf you're going to talk about homosexuality in the Circus stories, I think it's somewhat relevant that the entire foundation of the betrayal of Prideaux by Haydon is that they were former lovers. Moreover, Haydon - and others in the Circus, I think - have paramours of both genders. There's a line somewhere about him asking Smiley to take care of a mistress of his and also "there's a boy, a sailor in Quayside," or something like that.
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ReplyDeleteThe character of Peter in the novel is not at all devoid of inter conflict. Are you kidding? He's having a slow meltdown and show shocked dawning of the fact that the circus isn't and never was what he thought. He's full of rage at the end. He's constantly worried his girlfriend may be a plant from the other side or his own people.
ReplyDeleteBeing an admirer first and foremost of Le Carre's novels, I didn't like Guillame being made into a gay character for the sake of this particular film version. Le Carre's 2017 novel 'A Legacy of Spies', in which Guillame is the central figure, is based, as much as anything, on the character's inability to resist any woman that crossed his path.
ReplyDelete