Despite certain divergences in character and plot, this movie version of "The Russia House" does do justice to John Le Carre's twisted tale. Perhaps this is because so much of Hollywood shares Le Carre's own moral obtuseness -- wishing bureaucratic tyranny upon the rest of the world, while insulating itself with money.
Le Carre cannot tell the difference between West and East, between the bumbling mediocrity of western bureaucracies, and the unremitting evil of the Soviet bureaus, which owned everything in the evil empire, right down to peoples' souls. "The Russia House" was the first of his many post Cold War novels to make it clear that he could not, or would not.
Yet the man does write brilliantly. Le Carre is one of the great masters of English prose. Therefore one can almost forgive his blockheadedness, while one enjoys his rich descriptions, his twisted characters, and his sharp storytelling. It's only the morning after finishing one of his novels, or the hour after watching a movie adaptation such as this, that one's head begins to throb with the bitter, pointless, imbecility of his world view.
The cast of "The Russia House," headlined by Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer, is superb, with one glaring exception -- Roy Scheider in pancake makeup is simply not plausible as a CIA manager, even mid level. By contrast James Woods does an excellent job as his opposite number in British Intelligence (with support from a young Michael Kitchen, now the graying star of "Foyle's War"). But this movie is mainly worth watching for the engaging lead performances by Connery and Pfeiffer, even though (or perhaps because) they play their characters quite differently than they were drawn in the book.
The location photography is excellent, with nice views of Lisbon, and many long sequences shot in Moscow and Leningrad. Moscow looks nearly deserted, a graphic reminder that the official Soviet population figure, 5 million, was overstated by at least a factor of seven (according to Robert Heinlein).
There are interludes of wistful jazz woven seamlessly into the story, but much of the rest of the musical score is loud and distracting, especially toward the end. I suppose it was intended to induce anxiety in viewers who could not follow what was happening in the complicated plot. The director should have stuck with the jazz.
*
By far the best screen adaptation of a Le Carre novel is "The Little Drummer Girl" directed by George Roy Hill. It is one of the best movies ever made.
A very good movie that shows an intimate slice of life in the Soviet Union is the French film "East-West" (Est-Ouest).
Le Carre cannot tell the difference between West and East, between the bumbling mediocrity of western bureaucracies, and the unremitting evil of the Soviet bureaus, which owned everything in the evil empire, right down to peoples' souls. "The Russia House" was the first of his many post Cold War novels to make it clear that he could not, or would not.
Yet the man does write brilliantly. Le Carre is one of the great masters of English prose. Therefore one can almost forgive his blockheadedness, while one enjoys his rich descriptions, his twisted characters, and his sharp storytelling. It's only the morning after finishing one of his novels, or the hour after watching a movie adaptation such as this, that one's head begins to throb with the bitter, pointless, imbecility of his world view.
The cast of "The Russia House," headlined by Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer, is superb, with one glaring exception -- Roy Scheider in pancake makeup is simply not plausible as a CIA manager, even mid level. By contrast James Woods does an excellent job as his opposite number in British Intelligence (with support from a young Michael Kitchen, now the graying star of "Foyle's War"). But this movie is mainly worth watching for the engaging lead performances by Connery and Pfeiffer, even though (or perhaps because) they play their characters quite differently than they were drawn in the book.
The location photography is excellent, with nice views of Lisbon, and many long sequences shot in Moscow and Leningrad. Moscow looks nearly deserted, a graphic reminder that the official Soviet population figure, 5 million, was overstated by at least a factor of seven (according to Robert Heinlein).
There are interludes of wistful jazz woven seamlessly into the story, but much of the rest of the musical score is loud and distracting, especially toward the end. I suppose it was intended to induce anxiety in viewers who could not follow what was happening in the complicated plot. The director should have stuck with the jazz.
*
By far the best screen adaptation of a Le Carre novel is "The Little Drummer Girl" directed by George Roy Hill. It is one of the best movies ever made.
A very good movie that shows an intimate slice of life in the Soviet Union is the French film "East-West" (Est-Ouest).