I can’t even conceptualize the big-boy britches I’d need to say something interesting about this. A still-photo present (set on a cruise liner, Godardians) saves cinema for memory, but it’s a real lurch when the footage begins: hard shots of forced labor, guard dogs, and a sadistic survival game set to violent drums, and that’s just appetizer for the slow pan from a line of families entering a bunker up to the roaring smoke-stacks. A woman imagines her time as…

John Le Carre’s novel is all about marginalization as his subjects pass into the sunset, from aging cuckold George Smiley to Great Britain herself, a one-time superpower lapsing into sidekick territory during the Cold War. Naturally, Tomas Alfredson plays all this moodiness as an elliptical stream of consciousness, disembodied narration scoring flashbacks within flashbacks. It’s practically therapy, one long rueful sigh wrapped up in sexual frustration. This whole secret international war is treated like an interpersonal game among college stars,…