‘The Pigeon Tunnel’ Review: Errol Morris Crafts a Skeptical Portrait of the Ex-Spy Who Called Himself John le Carré
variety.comPeter Debruge Chief Film Critic In 2016, John le Carré published a memoir called “The Pigeon Tunnel,” which the late spy novelist — who died in late 2020 — claims had been the working title of nearly all his books at some point.
For le Carré, the term describes the passage through which naive birds of sport were forced from their nests, only to emerge as targets for marksmen waiting with rifles poised at a hotel in Monte Carlo.
That’s just one of several metaphors Le Carré uses to communicate his cynical worldview in a playful portrait from Errol Morris, whose career-long interest in truth and delusion fits his subject so well, the whole film ultimately feels like a bit of a ploy.
For starters, there was no such person as John le Carré, a pseudonym adopted by David Cornwell, an Oxford-educated ex-spy who turned to literature to process the absurdity of England’s so-called “intelligence” industry, which Cornwell slyly dubbed “the Circus.” Where Ian Fleming had made espionage out to be glamorous and sexy, Cornwell brought it down to a more bureaucratic realm, where loyalty and trust were the operative elements, in novels such as “The Russia House” and “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.” Who were the agents serving, and what motivated them?
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