Still Waters Run Deep

Title: The Night Manager

Rating: 4 Stars

I recently watched the BBC serial The Night Manager. It’s based upon John Le Carre’s novel, so I also took the opportunity to read it as well.

The BBC serial hued pretty close to the source. Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) is a night manager in a hotel in Cairo. A woman named Sophie Alekan (Aure Atika) asks him to keep some documents for safekeeping. He sees that they are documents about illegal arms dealings by Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie). Appalled by this, he secretly turns them over to the British intelligence service. Roper and his customer immediately learn that the papers have been turned in and suspect Alekan as being the source. Pine tries to protect Alekan and in so doing, the two fall in love. Alekan is brutally murdered, leaving Pine shattered.

Years later, while still working as a night manager but now in Europe, Pine and Roper cross paths again. Seeing an opportunity for revenge, Pine recontacts British intelligence. The British agent, Angela Burr (Olivia Coleman) recruits Pine on a very dangerous mission. He is to try to infiltrate deeply into Roper’s organization, gain his trust, and gather enough information on Roper to forever place him behind bars.

The bulk of the plot is the interplay between Pine and Roper. Will Roper trust Pine? Will Pine successfully manage the very deep game that he’s playing? Roper’s love is a woman named Jed Marshall (Elizabeth Debicki) who finds herself falling for Pine. Will Pine be able to save Marshall or will she end up just like Alekan?

I enjoyed both. The BBC serial was composed of six parts. Each part was about one hour. This was a good length. Adapted films of novels such as Le Carre’s are usually quite truncated. His novels are richly plotted with all kinds of twists and turns. You simply can’t do justice to one of his novels in a two hour film (I’m looking at you Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy). With six hours, Le Carre’s plot can unfold out with its complexity intact.

Another big advantage to the series was its excellent casting. Hiddleston was simply perfect as Pine. Pine has to be charming yet distant, handsome yet liked by all, seemingly eager to please yet hiding rage just under the surface, and seemingly floating effortlessly while working hard. Hiddleston managed all of this perfectly.

Similarly, Roper has to be perfectly charming yet brutally ruthless, endlessly suspicious yet trusting of Pine, and has to be the kind of person that treats the world revolving around him as just a matter of course. You can probably argue that Laurie can play a role like this in his sleep. Regardless, he does outstanding work.

The series major upgrade to the novel is in the character of Angela Burr. In Le Carre’s novel, this character is actually a man named Leonard Burr. Le Carre’s novel is, for the most part, populated by white men. The series took several opportunities to add diversity, which added additional richness. Burr is pregnant (to accommodate Coleman’s real life pregnancy). Just having a pregnant woman instead of the usual generic white male character is itself interesting (you can’t help but to feel extra squirmy when she finds herself in danger). Coleman, as she usually does, brings great complexity to the character. Burr ends up a much more interesting character in the series than in the novel.

One of my small beefs about the novel (and that probably kept it from getting five stars) is the ending. Having invested many hours of reading, the ending just kind of fizzled out. I don’t need an ending where everything is wrapped up in a pretty bow, but this ending, in particular, left me feeling unsatisfied.

The ending of the series is different than the novel. It’s a better ending, but, if anything, it seemed to try to make up for the somewhat desultory ending of the novel by having some unrealistic literal fireworks at the end.

So, to sum up, neither one really stuck the landing.

I enjoyed both, but I’d have to say that this is one of the rare times when the cinematic version of a novel not only met the original text but exceeded it.