John Le Carré: le tunnel aux pigeons

Director Errol Morris has made some pretty great documentaries in his career like "The Thin Blue Line, A Brief History of Time, and Fog of War" as Morris provides some interesting insightful documentaries and stories. With this one focusing on the career and life of John le Carré, Morris takes an interesting look of Carré's personality, career and the outlooks of the Cold War era and for the most part, it was solid.

John le Carré being the main subject provides some good and interesting conversations and discussions about his ideas and career with some pretty interesting dramatic reenactment moments to demonstrate the setting and environment. Throughout, the production was solid with the camerawork being good although nothing too special about it's presentation and colors. The conversations between Morris and Carré are strong as if there was good chemistry between the two of them.

However, the engagement wasn't the strongest as since topics about spy career isn't my most favorite genre of literature, there were some pacing moments that did feel a little sloppy that made certain subjects feel uninteresting to discuss about. There were certain discussion moments that I wished they had focused a little on more. The soundtrack does end up getting obnoxious as the soundtrack distracts certain moments.

Overall, it's an interesting documentary but it's not my favorite from Morris.

Greetings again from the darkness. When John le Carre passed away in 2020 at the age of 80, conversations and debates raged about the best spy novelists, and what stood out was, no matter how many writers were mentioned - Ian Fleming, Tom Clancey, Robert Ludlum, Ken Follett - everyone's list included le Carre. Oscar winning documentarian Errol Morris (THE FOG OF WAR, 2003) has taken le Carre's final and most personal interview and adorned it with film clips, rare archival footage, and some dramatic effects to create a lasting tribute to a superb writer and a most interesting man.

John le Carre was a former member of MI5 (British Security Service) and MI6 (British Intelligence Service), only at the time he was David Cornwell. Adapting his now world-famous nom de plume, le Carre became a spy who wrote spy novels. Really good spy novels. Not only were many of these to become bestsellers, many were also primed to be adapted to a film version or TV series. A few of his best-known novels include: "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold", "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", "The Night Manager", "The Constant Gardener", and "A Perfect Spy." His recurring character George Smiley was always a favorite, and was played expertly by two Oscar winners, Sir Alec Guiness and Gary Oldman.

For anyone who hasn't read le Carre's 2016 autobiography, "The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life", Morris is kind enough to include the explanation of the title. "The Pigeon Tunnel" was the working title le Carre used for many of his books while in progress, and we do get to hear the author detail how that particular phrase happened to stick. In fact, the real treasure here is in hearing le Carre's distinctive voice spin the yarn on so many stories. Whether writing or speaking, he was a fantastic storyteller, mesmerizing the readers and listeners.

With his storytelling-on-the-fly approach, le Carre recalls his childhood and life with a seamless blend of experience, memory, and imagination ... often with the Cold War as a backdrop. We aren't always sure where the blurred line between fact and embellishment falls, but we do know we are along for the ride. When John le Carre speaks of his fascination with "betrayal", we can't help but wish he were still around to provide commentary on this modern world.

Streaming globally on AppleTV+ beginning October 20, 2023.

This would be of particular interest if the viewer enjoyed the authors fiction which I did. This is a remarkable movie about a remarkable author living in Cold War times.

LeCarré somehow manages to capture the colour of the paint (tobacco brown) on the walls of the meager interrogation rooms and offices in his prose, and the underlying violence is subtle and implied rather than evident. And although there are sides to take his writing never demands this of the reader.

His skill in capturing the zeitgeist of the Cold War years is his brilliance which somewhat diminishes in the post war era when he still continues to shine in a more contemporary way.

See the video, LeCarré is the star.

Getting inside the head of a spy is undoubtedly challenging; getting inside the head of a novelist who was once a spy who now writes about that enigmatic profession is nearly impossible. And that's one of the hurdles that hampers this profile of former MI5 and MI6 operative David Cornwell, better known to the world by his pen name, John le Carré (1931-2020). Based on the author's memoir of the same name, the latest from documentarian Errol Morris puts the best-selling espionage novelist under the microscope, seeking to discover who le Carré is, what factors impacted his life and writings, and how his novels mirror those influences in terms of content and themes. Through discussions of books like "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold," "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," "Smiley's People," "A Perfect Spy" and "The Looking Glass War," backed by clips of film and television adaptations of these works, le Carré and Morris ruminate on the writer's objectives in bringing them to life, some of them personal in nature and some of them expressions of his feelings about the murky underworld he left behind and brought to life on the printed page. Much of what the author consequently discusses comes across as dark, cryptic, and characterized by rampant intrigue and betrayal, not unlike the life he left behind (as well as the dismal upbringing he underwent at the knee of his untrustworthy father, a professional swindler adept at plying his craft). The insights, to say the least, are rather depressing and disquieting. But that unsettling material is further compounded by a string of often-perplexing observations about le Carré's existential outlooks and literary intentions, some of which seemingly amount to little more than oh so much navel gazing and intellectual masturbation, overstated attempts at encapsulating his perspectives on human nature and human relations as reflected through his works. I can imagine that there's probably a market for a film like this among Anglophiles captivated by the writer's works, the spy novel genre in general and PBS/BBC television dramas, but it really didn't do much for me, especially since this offering pales in comparison to many of Morris's other better productions. Thankfully, the picture's merciful 1:32:00 runtime proved to be its saving grace (even though the picture admittedly improves once it gets past an overly long, excessively detailed prologue). Ironically, le Carré notes in the film that he sees his novels as an antidote to the James Bond books and movies, but, from where I stand, I'll take 007 over this any day.

I never read John le Carre books, but I appreciated the movies that were made from them and now that I have heard the author speak about his life, I am even more enthralled. He admits that at times he is not even sure what's real and what is fiction.

He educates us on what it takes to make a good spy - and made me happy that I am not of that ilk, but did appreciate that he was.

He explained what made him a write and why he titled his biography "The Pigeon Tunnel". It was all very educational to us, the viewer, if we really listened.

The filming of it was brilliant and quiet. Quick quips of photos and some news prints and the stories behind them.

He lead a complicated life and shared it with us, in books and this documentary.

He died at age 89 in 2020, so we were lucky at all to have had this time with him, but we still have his books.

Enjoy!