The Gaying of Peter Guillam (In Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy)

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.

WHYYYYYYY?