The comedian plays a teacher who takes a job at a Nazi-sympathising Bexhill school on the cusp of the second world war
Eddie Izzard, comedy genius and heroic campaigner for the European cause, is bizarrely miscast in a deadpan-serious acting role for this weird, strained, second world war spy melodrama inspired by a stranger-than-fiction true story. The transgender star switches back here to what Izzard has playfully called “boy mode” for a boy’s-own-story in the style of John Buchan or Erskine Childers, or maybe one of Michael Palin’s Ripping Yarns, though with the jokes and comic self-awareness systematically removed. It’s a muddled, unrelaxed tale from Izzard as co-writer and co-producer, whose dramatic gears keep slipping, and which is never entirely sure where our sympathies should lie.
Related: Eddie Izzard: 'I'm just trying to create a space for myself'...
Eddie Izzard, comedy genius and heroic campaigner for the European cause, is bizarrely miscast in a deadpan-serious acting role for this weird, strained, second world war spy melodrama inspired by a stranger-than-fiction true story. The transgender star switches back here to what Izzard has playfully called “boy mode” for a boy’s-own-story in the style of John Buchan or Erskine Childers, or maybe one of Michael Palin’s Ripping Yarns, though with the jokes and comic self-awareness systematically removed. It’s a muddled, unrelaxed tale from Izzard as co-writer and co-producer, whose dramatic gears keep slipping, and which is never entirely sure where our sympathies should lie.
Related: Eddie Izzard: 'I'm just trying to create a space for myself'...
- 3/25/2021
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
With its complex plotting, acute understanding of human nature and timeless moral dilemmas, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is Le Carré's masterwork.
• Download the Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy audio book for free
A
Adapting a novel for the cinema presents unique problems – it's not at all the straightforward process people assume, particularly if the novel is as complex and cerebral as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The screenwriters of this exceptionally fine and sombre new dramatisation of the novel (Peter Straughan and the late Bridget O'Connor) have perfectly reflected its labyrinthine world of bluff and counter-bluff, of suspicion and paranoia, of corruption and betrayal.
B
Betrayal is the novel's and the film's great theme – and perhaps the dark undercurrent beneath all of John Le Carré's work. Indeed one might claim that, among the few things we British are very good at – cricket, bespoke tailoring, dictionaries – is the spy novel. Possibly this...
• Download the Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy audio book for free
A
Adapting a novel for the cinema presents unique problems – it's not at all the straightforward process people assume, particularly if the novel is as complex and cerebral as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The screenwriters of this exceptionally fine and sombre new dramatisation of the novel (Peter Straughan and the late Bridget O'Connor) have perfectly reflected its labyrinthine world of bluff and counter-bluff, of suspicion and paranoia, of corruption and betrayal.
B
Betrayal is the novel's and the film's great theme – and perhaps the dark undercurrent beneath all of John Le Carré's work. Indeed one might claim that, among the few things we British are very good at – cricket, bespoke tailoring, dictionaries – is the spy novel. Possibly this...
- 9/17/2011
- by William Boyd
- The Guardian - Film News
Directed and produced by Jerry O'Callaghan (Broken Harvest) of Black Rock Pictures, a new 6x30 Irish language Civil War docu-drama series 'Bású na gCarad' will begin shooting on locations throughout Dublin and Wicklow. Filming will take place in July and September before transmission on TG4 next Spring. The historical series will focus on the execution of Irish nationalist Erskine Childers and several other prisoners during the Irish civil war. Dominic Frisby will play Erskine Childers with Jessica Reagan playing the role of Molly Childers...
- 6/29/2011
- IFTN
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