reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (10/28/84)
John Le Carre's "The Little Drummer Girl" is one of the
finest of all spy novels. The story concerns terrorism and
anti-terrorism, focussing on the Israeli/Palestinian situation,
and is full of convolutions and surprises. The book's multiple
themes include the moral ambiguity of both sides, the coercive
power of love, and the cost of violence to those who perform it.
George Roy Hill's film version of the book manages to keep a
surprising amount of both the plot and the themes in the film,
but something has been lost. The film, while good, is not one of
the great spy films.
The problem is Hill. His direction is professional, but
doesn't capture Le Carre's shadowy world of men and women willing
to do anything for their cause. Hill's great talent is for mix-
ing drama and action with humor, as demonstrated by "Butch Cassi-
dy and the Sundance Kid", "The Sting", and "The World According
to Garp", among many other films with similar tones. "The Little
Drummer Girl" comes to life on the few occasions when Hill can
legitimately set a lighter tone. At all other times, even in ac-
tion sequences, the film is, well, not lifeless, but also not
electric.
Part of the problem would have been hard for anyone to
avoid. As mentioned, the plot is complex (not by Le Carre's
standards, perhaps, but certainly by anyone else's). Loring Man-
del, the screenwriter, almost miraculously fits in all of the im-
portant elements of the story, and still manages to touch upon
the major themes within a two hour script. However, this fine
job of compression requires Hill to play most scenes rather slow-
ly so that the audience can follow what's going on. Hill has al-
ways preferred to set a quicker pace. A great script, as opposed
to this very good one, or a director more comfortable with lei-
surely pacing might have been able to get more from the project.
"The Little Drummer Girl" was a controversial book which
managed to offend both Palestinians and Israelis by presenting
the justice of both of their causes and the savagery of both
sides' methods. The film preserves this point of view. The
story concerns an Israeli plot to catch one of the most important
Palestinian terrorists, Khalil. The Israeli scheme centers on
the terrorist's preference for using European women recruited to
the Palestinian cause, and the relative visibility of Khalil's
brother, who is part of the terrorist organization. To make the
plot work, Kurtz, the Israeli leading the operation, must infil-
trate an agent into the terrorist group. He chooses Charlie, an
actress with pro-Palestinian leanings. Kurtz's first task is to
convince Charlie to do it against her convictions. The method
used is brilliant, playing on Charlie's deepest insecurities and
need for love rather than trying to convert her to the Israeli
point of view. Now Charlie is ready to start on an adventure
that will take her across Europe and to Palestinian training
camps in Lebanon and will require the actress to give the perfor-
mance of her life.
Diane Keaton gives a pretty good performance as Charlie.
The role was originally written for an Englishwoman, but the
conversion to an American doesn't much harm the film, and was an
economic necessity. There is currently no British actress of the
right age with the box office power necessary to bring large au-
diences in. Keaton's weakest moments come when she is onstage,
doing Shakespeare and "Saint Joan". She is much more convincing
playing Charlie playing herself. This is the sort of a perfor-
mance which might get nominated for an Academy Award, in a slow
year, but certainly won't win. Klaus Kinski is strong as Kurtz.
Hill gets more from him than any director other than Werner Her-
zog. Yorgo Voyagis playing Joseph, the Israeli agent most respon-
sible for recruiting Charlie, is strong but somewhat inarticu-
late. The supporting cast, largely unknowns (to me, at least),
is very good.
Technically, "The Little Drummer Girl" is a typically com-
petent Hollywood movie, with the unusual twist that most of the
technical people are Europeans. (Milos Forman also used a Euro-
pean crew for "Amadeus", but Forman comes from Czechoslovakia,
making him more inclined to use Europeans.) Since "The Little
Drummer Girl" was shot in England, Germany, and Israel, using lo-
cal talent made a lot of sense, and paid off.
"The Little Drummer Girl represents an unusual thematic
departure from Hollywood's usual pro-Israel line, only possible
because it was based on a novel whose moral ambiguities could not
be safely rewritten while preserving the essential qualities of
the book. This film presents a point of view many people have
never seen, but is evenhanded in its revelations. It's worth
seeing on this basis alone, but it also offers a moderate amount
of suspense and a large helping of the kind of intellectual sa-
tisfaction given by a tight, complex plot well presented. Good
performances and good production values, including fine use
of locations, add to a rather satisfying film. A more ap-
propriate choice of director might have led to an excellent film.
--
Peter Reiher
reiher@ucla-cs.arpa
{...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher