THE PIGEON TUNNEL - Mark Reviews Movies

The Pigeon Tunnel, Apple Studios

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | October 19, 2023

Unlike many of the filmmaker's subjects, John le Carré knows who Errol Morris is, and more importantly, the author of spy literature also knows Morris' techniques of getting to some core of the person whom he's interviewing. Le Carré, the pen name of former intelligence agent David Cornwell, has been on Morris' side of an interview many, many times, too, but if he was talking to a subject in an enclosed room, that discussion was usually an interrogation.

In other words, there's tension from the very start of The Pigeon Tunnel, which documents a series of question-and-answer sessions Morris had with le Carré before the latter's death in 2020. Neither man knows what's to come in this talk, because Morris is a director who admits at the beginning of this film that he wants the course of the conversation to guide the narrative and purpose of his face-to-face documentaries. Meanwhile, le Carré is certain that, if Morris has any interest in him, it must be on account of something he has done that has earned the ire of the filmmaker for some reason.

The thick air between the two men is probably unwarranted, because each of them admires the other's work in ways that are both implicit to the film's existence and explicitly vocalized at different points throughout it. It's tough to call the tension a kind of theater, though. For all le Carré knows, Morris might have done some additional digging into his past, found some connection in his fictional writings to some real event or person of some disagreeable nature, or uncovered something in some recently declassified document that puts him in the middle of a scandal.

It's not as if le Carré, who's in his 80s at the time of filming and feeling quite nostalgic and retrospective about his life, has anything to hide, but for those who know the director's work, Morris' reputation proceeds him. His precise interview techniques, slicing like a scalpel and probing toward often uncomfortable depths, can get subjects, not only to obtain the rope, but also to fashion the noose. Morris ensures there's an audience for the metaphorical hanging.

Even if le Carré knows there isn't any dirt on him for anything he hasn't already confessed by way of his spy literature, who's to say Morris won't strike with something unexpected at any moment? It's pretty clear early on and throughout the documentary that such a thing isn't on his mind. It's equally apparent that the underlying worry about the possibility makes le Carré, sitting in comfort in his home library (where he and the bookshelves are framed at such canted angles that one wonders if the architecture of the room is crooked) and at a cozy dining table, more honest than he might have been with any random interviewer.

That honesty here goes deep—deeper than just memories of childhood, stark admissions about le Carré's difficult relationship with his con artist father, his opinions on the Cold War and his participation in it while working for both MI5 and MI6, how much of his own life and way of thinking define the plots, characters, and themes of his fictional works over the course of six decades. Le Carré is a man is who isn't sure if he—or anyone else, for that matter—possesses any firm form of character, morality, or belief system.

Most people, he believes, act in, at, and based on any given moment in time, depending entirely on what they want or need at that particular moment. Maybe one's past experiences come into play in the decision, but can memories of them even be trusted? Le Carré, for example, is certain that, as a child, he waved to his father from outside a prison, but when he told this story to him, the father pointed out that there were no windows looking out on the street at that prison. Both le Carré and his father are right about what happened, even if only one of them is factually correct about the fact it couldn't possibly have happened in the first place.

Does a false memory held by le Carré say as much about him as any true one, or is it just a private fiction that he told himself to make some kind of sense of the relationship with his father? Does it matter at all, since none of that changes what actually happened between the two men or the stories the father would tell about his rich and famous son who treated his old man so poorly?

There are times that it seems Morris is almost at a loss for just how honest his subject here is—not because he admits to anything controversial about his professional lives as a spy and a writer, but simply on account of how few questions he has to ask to get le Carré talking at length. The man's genius is self-evident from listening to any of these passages, and Morris keeps up with him—offering some pointed observations or follow-up questions to keep him talking, intercutting read sections from le Carré's novels and short stories or film/TV adaptations of them to match the content, providing silent dramatic re-creations of key moments from the author's personal or professional life to fill in the gaps.

The Pigeon Tunnel isn't a traditional biography by any means. It's simply watching and listening to a man, as he dissects the obvious intersection of art and life, the uncertainty of memory, the apparent certainty of human nature, and how he arrived at this personal philosophy. It's an intimate portrait of le Carré as a writer and, if he's at all right—as he often seems to be—about any of his observations, a haunting thesis on what makes people tick.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products