I miss John le Carré so much. I had gotten used to his novels coming out once every 2 or 3 years and would look forward to the release of the first paperback edition which I could afford to buy as soon as I had the chance. His books took me into the world of espionage, but mostly of the people who had chosen to become spies or for whom life had decided that they should become spies. The spies in his books are people like us, sometimes even with more pangs of conscience and doubts, given their profession and the fact that they were born English. Of course, I also watch the movies inspired by his books. Some managed to bring to the screen in cinematic language the meanderings of the action and the turmoil of the heroes. Others were far from expectations and the quality of emotions in his books. ‘The Tailor of Panama‘ (2001), directed by John Boorman, is probably one of the most faithful screen versions of a novel by John le Carré. One of the main reasons is that the film, released 5 years after the first publication of the novel, enjoyed the direct involvement of le Carré, who appears on the credits as co-writer and executive producer.
The heroes of spy movies and books usually fall between two extremes: the heroes of John le Carré and James Bond. One of the two main heroes in ‘The Tailor of Panama‘ is played by Pierce Brosnan who, when the film was made was the titular service performer in the James Bond series. And yet Andrew Osnard, the MI6 agent played by Brosnan, is very different from Bond. They have in common only the hobby of womanizing. Otherwise, unlike the incorruptible and devoted Bond, Osnard is a corrupt individual who leaves behind scandals and failures. Residence in Panama is for the agent compromised in other parts of the world a kind of disciplinary exile, from which he wants to escape at all costs. The recruitment of Harry Pendel, a tailor who came from London to marry and make men fashion in Panama, fits into this plan of rehabilitation in the spying hierarchy. Pendel has a problematic biography and is not difficult to blackmail and recruit as an informant. Among his clients are politicians and journalists, the president of the republic and former revolutionaries, and his wife works in the offices of the company that manages the Panama Canal, a vital artery of world trade. Pendel seems like the classic type of victim whose life is invaded by the world of espionage, but in this case the victim decides to fight back and take revenge by inventing a parallel reality that invades the world of espionage. Today we would call this ‘fake news’, except that we are a few years before the invention of social networks. ‘Secret information’ reaching MI6 is passed on to American allies and threatens to produce an invasion of the country where the precious strategic objective was located. The theme of the agent who makes up ‘information’ which, processed by espionage services that are all the more incompetent and corrupt the higher up the hierarchy, can produce international political crises was invented by Graham Greene in ‘Our Man in Havana’, a novel published in 1958 and also screened in 1959. Greene and le Carré, both former British secret service agents, knew well the world they described in their novels. In both books, the actions of intelligence-gathering machines destroy human destinies and lives.
The most memorable acting performance in ‘The Tailor of Panama‘ is undoubtedly that of Geoffrey Rush. Harry Pendel enters the game against his will, pressured to deliver and blackmailed into continuing. He realizes too late that this is a deadly game and that the revenge he planned will hit the people closest to him and endanger the family cell he wanted to protect. Like many of John le Carré‘s characters, Harry Pendel’s identity is not the real one, and successive layers of disguises and lies are gradually revealed, until we arrive at a personal truth that is difficult to live with. Along with Rush, we have Pierce Brosnan and Jamie Lee Curtis in the cast, actors who were then at the height of their careers. The entire cast is otherwise excellent – with playwright Harold Pinter in a role with brief but significant appearances and a very young Daniel Radcliffe in the role that precedes his stellar launching as the Harry Potter series lead character. I found the only character more shallowly drawn to be the ex-revolutionary Abraxas, who misses the emotional impact at a key moment, but that’s due to the script rather than to Brendan Gleeson‘s performance. John Boorman – a director whose highly successful films date back to the 60s and 70s – succeeds, I think, with ‘The Tailor of Panama‘ in making one of the best adaptations of a novel by John le Carré.