The Looking Glass War
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Anthony Hopkins, Christopher Jones, Paul Rogers, Pia Degermark, Ralph RichardsonDVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); Japanese (Subtitled); Georgian (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 107 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-12-09
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Sony Pictures
Movie Reviews of The Looking Glass War
Movie Review: Understandably misundertood film
Summary: 5 Stars
If you're looking for a film which captures the gritty, tawdry mechanics of espionage in post-war Europe, this is a pretty fair adaptation of leCarre's book. If you are too young to have any meaningful recollection of the time period in which the events take place (early 60s), you might have some difficulty believing such things occurred. It's been years since I saw the film, but a brief look at the reviews suggested some clarifications were needed.
The story begins at the airport in Helsinki.It is winter (Jan - May). Someone working for British intelligence is waiting at the airport for a flight which will take him back to the UK. He has a roll of film containing photos of an East German or Polish military installation (can't recall which, just someplace near the Baltic). These photos either confirm or refute satellite images which suggest relocation of a Soviet missile formation. My recollection is that the missiles were nothing more than air-defense types, but I could be wrong. Anyway, satellite-imaging was still in its infancy, and the images weren't that good, so confirmation was needed -- humint, or someone with a camera and nothing to lose.
The guy at the airport has two or three too many while waiting for the flight, which is ultimately cancelled due to inclement weather. He can't find a taxi, so he elects to walk 2 or 3 kms back to town. He weaves into the road, is hit and killed by a car traveling too fast for the snowy conditions, and the roll of film falls out of his coat pocket, into a deep snow drift. Someone from British Intelligence comes to collect the body, discovers the loss of the film, and reports back to London.
No one in London knows whether the car struck the man intentionally, or whether Soviet agents recovered the film. But they decide that the infortmation is of such importance that another man must be sent in. As with other leCarre's plots, it's not clear why this info is so vital, and who in the political or military sphere has deemed it to be so. Nevertheless, the Circus (MI5 or 6) decides to send someone back in. In the book, a fair amount of dialog leads the reader to conclude that certain members of the Circus orchestrate the entire affair because it reminds them of exhilerating operations they conducted against the Germans during WW2 -- the movie may or may not have captured that.
The rest of the film deals with inevitable human tragedy. The Circus recruits a young Polish or German emigre for the task, and trains him for the mission. Another reviewer lamented the fact that the young actor portraying the emigre had his voice dubbed, which suggests that he or she may have missed a key element of field espionage at the time -- almost all humint operations in the old Soviet Bloc were conducted by local nationals: an English accent wouldn't have been very plausible in Poland or East Germany.
The young man recruited for the job is probably a pretty fair reflection of many of those who did the hands-on espionage work for the UK and US in the 50s, 60s & 70s (and even today, for all I know) -- a foreigner estranged from his homeland, with limited prospects, and a desire for something better, or different, or more financially rewarding. He is used by British Intelligence, but his circumstances compel him to be a willing participant.
A sense of forebodeing pervades the film (which is utterly without 'action'). This is pure drama, and the viewer cannot help but think that, however it plays out, it will end badly. The acting is good enough to keep the viewer focused on events as they unfold, which very much adds to the power of the film, because you don't really pause to recall how utterly pointless the whole chain of events really was until after the inevitable occurs.
As with almost all of leCarre's work, the story is unfailing in its depiction of human beings, both ordinary and otherwise, struggling to deal with events over which they rarely have much control. It is a depressing story, and a sad one. Unlike "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold", there is really no character upon which to vent one's anger/frustration at the pointlessness of it all. You won't find the inverted morality of Smiley and Mundt, the tragedy that befalls Lemas and Fiedler, and the rage one feels when the Smiley/Mundt link is discovered. All you get with "The Looking Glass War" is emptiness.
With all that said, I would still recommend the film to anyone with more than a passing interest in either real-world espionage, or the human capacity for hubris. The only film that I can immediately recall that left me with a similar feeling was Kubrick's "Paths of Glory".
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