fandomnumbergenerator | Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

I’ve been thinking about the changes they made in the 2011 adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (I haven’t seen the miniseries).

Having read the book an actually kind of unreasonable number of times, I think that beyond all the trappings of spycraft, the story is actually about two relationships: Smiley and Ann and Haydon and Prideaux. There is a subtle parallel between the two relationships, and Haydon destroys both of them. But in the movie, they take all the heat out of the Haydon/Prideaux relationship and leave it as a kind of subtext. And Ann (as a speaking, thinking human) entirely disappears from the movie.

Ann is pretty much the first person in the book to realize that Haydon is the mole, though, not being a spy, she doesn’t know what she knows, just that there is something really wrong with Haydon. Prideaux is probably the second person to know that Haydon is the mole (he goes to warn him that control is on to him before he is sent to Czechoslovakia). Karla sets Haydon up to betray, not just Britain, but specific individuals, and it his intimates who figure it out first.

In the book, there is what I assume to be a period-typical level of casual homophobia, particularly with regards to effeminate gay men (obviously still a problem in the real world).

Somehow Haydon, whose flings with men are an open secret, escapes from this crude homophobia. He is described as a bohemian artist (as well as being upper class) and so is given a certain leeway. He is also never described as effeminate.

And his relationship with Prideaux is handled very seriously. At university, Haydon pretty clearly has romantic feelings for Prideaux, even if it’s unclear if their relationship was sexual. Bill Roach (Prideaux’s shy, observant student) realizes immediately that Prideaux has lost his companion, and muses that he doesn’t understand how adults love one another. And then at the end of the book, Smiley states, without any sideness, that Haydon and Prideaux may have been lovers.

And I actually sort of see why they took most of that out of the movie. Because the the theme of public/private betrayal is mirrored in the treatment of Haydon’s bisexuality (including a crass foreshadowing that he is the double agent, when Gwillam says of Haydon “they said he went both ways”). It is totally in keeping with the post-Burgess conflation of homosexuality and treason, and specifically double agents. (And it’s worth noting that unlike Burgess, Blunt, and Maclean, Philby, who Haydon was based on, was probably straight.)

So, in the movie, they take out all explicit references to Haydon’s bisexuality, and tone down his relationship with Prideaux. And to compensate, they make Peter Gwillam (straight in the book) into a more modern kind of gay character (one that is hard to imagine Le Carre writing in 1974) a straight-acting man in a stable relationship with another (straight-acting) man. And the homophobia is of an external, impersonal kind, where he is forced to be closeted (and to break up with his partner) to keep his job.