THE PIGEON TUNNEL (2023)

Between his own fictionalized telling (A PERFECT SPY); highly selective auto-bio vignettes under this title (THE PIGEON TUNNEL); multiple ‘in-depth’ interviews & unauthorized biographies; the adolescent & professional life of David Cornwell (aka John le Carré) is a thrice-told tale . . . and then some.  Yet it still feels fresh & filled with expectation when the 89 yr-old author, shortly before his death, underwent the unique filming techniques & interlocutory powers of documentarian Errol Morris.  Raised by a confidence blackguard, recruited to spydom out of university, working in the grey zone of Cold War political ethics, astonishingly successful, transformative author of spy novels (think anti-Ian Fleming/James Bond), it makes for a compelling film even when Morris overloads on superfluous re-enactments.  Le Carrê one of those extraordinary extemporaneous speakers who just naturally emit superbly nuanced, perfectly structured compound sentences pre-organized into easy to understand, knowingly contradictory paragraphs.  (Though who knows what’s hidden under that terrifyingly bushy left eyebrow?)  One surprise though; in spite of keeping his thumb off the measuring scale of culpability between the East/West political divide, le Carré clearly disagrees with E.M. Forster’s famous dictum on how if he ‘had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.’   Turns out, the first major independent act of le Carré’s maturity proved quite the opposite.  And one he says he would repeat.  Morris chastises himself on not pushing farther into personal matters (home, family, sex), but personal & political ethics is the line of inquiry he skimps on.  But his typically elegant filmmaking makes up for a lot.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: While the original mini-series of TINKER, TAILOR SOLDIER, SPY/’79 remains nonpareil le Carré, the underrated follow up, SMILEY’S PEOPLE/’82, not far behind.  OR: Try Sidney Lumet’s early, uneven attempt at le Carré-Land in THE DEADLY AFFAIR/’66.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/06/tinker-tailor-soldier-spy-1979.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/11/smileys-people-1982.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-deadly-affair-1966.html