Troubled political realities of Middle East like Israeli-Palestinian conflict usually failed to catch attention by Hollywood in decades before 9/11. One of opportunities for American film industry to deal with such subject was The Little Drummer Girl, 1983 spy novel by John Le Carré, a well-researched, best-selling and critically acclaimed book which is considered one of the most successful in the author’s career. A year later the novel was adapted into eponymous film directed by George Roy Hill.
The title protagonist, played by Diane Keaton, is Charlie, American stage actress working in England. Like with many of her colleagues, her political beliefs are way to the left and she enthusiastically embraced the Palestinian cause. The plot begins in 1981 West Germany where Israeli diplomat and his family get killed by a bomb delivered to their home. Team of crack Israeli intelligence operatives, led by Martin Kurtz (played by Klaus Kinski), identify perpetrators as members of network led by militant Palestinian leader known as Khalil. As this happens, Charlie meets masked Palestinian activist nicknamed “Michel” and later, when she sees him unmasked, realises that he is an attractive man (played by Yorgo Voyagis). While shooting television commercial in Greece, she is approached by “Michel” only to find that he isn’t “Michel” or Palestinian at all. He is “Joseph”, one of Kurtz’s operatives who try to recruit her for the complicated and dangerous operation aimed at locating and neutralising Khalil. Charlie is reluctant as first, but clever manipulation and appeal to her professional pride as an actress lead her to agree. The plan is to concoct the love affair with real “Michel” who happens to be Khalil’s brother and who has been secretly captured by Israeli. She would use it in order to win the trust of Khalil’s confederates and infiltrate their network.
Like most of Le Carrés novels,The Little Drummer Girl took unromantic and unsentimental view of the espionage while avoiding black-and-white characterisation. This can be seen in the film that takes much more objective and nuance view of Middle Eastern conflict, so different from staunchly pro-Israel views characteristic of Hollywood. Israelis are forced to fight terrorists that kill innocent people in cold blood, but they too engage in morally questionable acts like kidnapping, torture and murder. One of the Israeli operatives, played by Eli Danker, is clearly identified as bigot and even one of the Israelis admit that his side committed inexcusable war crimes that fuel the vicious circle of revenge and violence to this day, while a Palestinian leader explicitly rejects anti-Semitism and claims that his side fights against the Jewish state and not against the Jews. George Roy Hill tries to maintain this realistic approach with as much realism as possible, including some of the shooting locations being in Lebanon, then still affected by long and bloody civil war. However, his efforts are compromised by terrible miscasting of Diane Keaton as protagonist. Obviously too old to play character who was 20-something naive Englishwoman in the novel, she has problems getting sympathies from the audience who would view her as silly, arrogant, irresponsible and too promiscuous. The Little Drummer Girl is more fortunate with the rest of the cast, especially with legendary German actor Klaus Kinski who plays arguably the most quiet and thoughtful character in his career. Greek actor Yorgo Voyagis also handles his complex role very well. But, despite those efforts, The Little Drummer Girl has problems with pace being too fast and Loring Mandel’s script that apparently fails to compress 500 pages of complex plot and characters into two hours of running time. At the time of premiere, many critics familiar with the novel claimed that television miniseries was much more suitable medium of adaptation. In 2018 those views were validated by much better received BBC miniseries starring Florence Pugh and directed by Park Chan-wook.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
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