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Wikipedia had failed to inform me that Peter Guillam (played by Cumberbatch) wasn't gay in the book! A deftly-chosen alteration that increased relevancy to the present while also enabling it to illuminate an issue that was quite a bit worse in the time it's set in. I admit, when I saw the publication date I was a bit surprised about that at first (but since his narrative ends in misery I figured it was still regressive... though more 80s-90s than 60s).
I went back to look at Wikipedia just to check, and there's no space dedicated to adaptational choices or differences or anything, even though the book and the movie both have their own articles and the book's has a subheading about the movie.
The book's Guillam has the same unconscious casual misogyny as the not-a-hero protagonist of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, I think, although we see that one form an attachment to a woman eventually while still being both completely awful and completely earnest (that might be where this is going too). This is obviously not sympathetic, but it's also obviously on purpose, because we can see what le Carré's ideas of not awful attitudes to women are elsewhere in his work. So while I'm not enjoying it, I can give him credit since it's what he was going for, like when someone does a successful job of making a food you don't like, or of painting something really disgusting. Like "Yep. That worked, that's doing what you wanted it to."
So far Guillam is a womanizer, which is even more tiresome than just basic misogyny, from my point of view. I mean, I'm still going to finish the book, but since that keeps putting me off it's definitely slowing me down. I might've just stayed up and finished it last night already if that weren't the case. (And also if in addition to not being offputting a character had actually been gay, I might've finished it days ago, since after I first picked it up I set it aside and read Full Fathom Five and about 100,000 words of fanfiction before coming back to it yesterday.)
I went back to look at Wikipedia just to check, and there's no space dedicated to adaptational choices or differences or anything, even though the book and the movie both have their own articles and the book's has a subheading about the movie.
The book's Guillam has the same unconscious casual misogyny as the not-a-hero protagonist of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, I think, although we see that one form an attachment to a woman eventually while still being both completely awful and completely earnest (that might be where this is going too). This is obviously not sympathetic, but it's also obviously on purpose, because we can see what le Carré's ideas of not awful attitudes to women are elsewhere in his work. So while I'm not enjoying it, I can give him credit since it's what he was going for, like when someone does a successful job of making a food you don't like, or of painting something really disgusting. Like "Yep. That worked, that's doing what you wanted it to."
So far Guillam is a womanizer, which is even more tiresome than just basic misogyny, from my point of view. I mean, I'm still going to finish the book, but since that keeps putting me off it's definitely slowing me down. I might've just stayed up and finished it last night already if that weren't the case. (And also if in addition to not being offputting a character had actually been gay, I might've finished it days ago, since after I first picked it up I set it aside and read Full Fathom Five and about 100,000 words of fanfiction before coming back to it yesterday.)
