Film review: The Pigeon Tunnel

David Cornwell rose to fame under his pen name, John le Carre.

The Pigeon Tunnel (PG13, 92 mins) Streaming on Apple TV+

Directed by Errol Morris

You don’t have to have read The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, or any of John le Carre’s other works of spy fiction to find Errol Morris’s exquisitely made documentary intriguing.

All you need is a bit of interest in the kinds of people who became traitors during the Cold War, in those who exposed them (or tried to), and in the life and work of one of the world’s most famous spy fiction writers.

John le Carre, the pen name of David Cornwell, had made $100 million at the time of his death in 2020, a sign of his massive talent and his reading public’s preparedness to go along with a view of spying that was anything but glamorous, nothing like James Bond.

The spies in le Carre’s books are hard-working and slightly grubby, not exactly role models, but John le Carre himself, while he says there’s a bit of him in each of his characters, is charming and erudite as he talks to Errol Morris about his life and about his love of writing.

Through its interviews, archival footage and reconstructions, does The Pigeon Tunnel reveal who John le Carre really was? The short answer is not altogether. He talks about many aspects of his life, but you’ll have to go to one of the biographies to find out about his serial adultery.

Adam Sisman’s The Secret Life of John le Carre is “a portrait of lifelong duplicity and betrayal as carried out by a novelist whose work so often focused on those themes,” according to the Washington Post’s reviewer Dan Fesperman.

The documentary hinges on an early scene of Montecarlo Casino patrons, including le Carre’s father Ronnie Cornwell. He was a serial philanderer and frequent bankrupt, shooting at pigeons bred on the casino’s roof and living in cages there, released through a basement tunnel purely for the purpose of being shot at.

The surviving birds instinctively return home to their cages, only to be shot at again the next time they’re released. They’re in a way just like spies, going back for more risk, time after time.

“Who are you?”, le Carre asks Errol Morris, who’s meant to be the interviewer. Le Carre then explains that’s the question he has in mind all the time when he’s writing. It’s important to him not only that his characters know themselves, but for his readers to as well, if they’re going to get to grips with his characters.

What drove le Carre to write is the question the documentary asks, and answers in quite a mesmerising way.

Risk-taking is clearly the lifeblood of Le Carre’s characters. While Le Carre points to his father’s risk-taking as the crucial early influence on him, his own love of risk is clear too.

Pigeon-like, he takes readers repeatedly to risky situations, exposes his characters to being shot down, and watches while some escape. Were any traitors among them? That’s the question le Carre subtly asks in his books, and challenges us to answer.

Highly recommended

Movies are rated: Avoid, Recommended, Highly recommended and Must see.

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