'The Little Drummer Girl': How director Park Chan-wook did away with all the '70s cliches
As the years between Woodstock and Reagan, the 1970s were the tacky anticlimax that never really inclined towards anything. With the Beatles breaking up, Diana Ross setting out on her solo career, Jimi Hendrix leaving way before his time, and Stanley Kubrick's 'A Clockwork Orange' drawing the line between the Flower Powered '60s and the Baby Booming '80s with its depiction of the disillusioned '70s, the decade is either forgotten or depicted with a plethora of cliches. Fortunately, Park Chan Wook's adaptation of John Le Carre's 1983 novel, 'The Little Drummer Girl' has done away with all the cliches.
The '70s have always been depicted in a dull, damp palette, with characters mostly tuned according to the post-war eras of '50s and '60s. That is exactly what Chan-wook has done away with while setting his characters in the period.