‘The Pigeon Tunnel’ documentary review: A fascinating portrait of a spy as a novelist

John le Carré (David Cornwell) and Errol Morris in a still from ‘The Pigeon Tunnel’
| Photo Credit: Apple Studios

The Pigeon Tunnel, the epistemological Academy-Award-winning docu-filmmaker Errol Morris’ investigation into the life of British intelligence agent David Cornwell (better known as the bestselling author John Le Carré), begins with Cornwell asking Morris, “Who are you?”

And that sets the tone for this descent into a labyrinth of evasions, half-truths and suppositions. Based on Le Carré’s 2016 memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life, the film begins with Cornwell’s intriguing notion that interviews are also interrogations, which is a way to look at interviews, particularly the adversarial kind.

Starting with the title, which Cornwell says was the working title of almost all his books, to the existential black humour of the final chapter involving the trousers of the Nazi leader, Rudolf Hess, and a secret safe, The Pigeon Tunnel makes for fascinating viewing.

Cornwell’s difficult relationship with his father, Ronald Cornwell, whom he refers to as Ronnie, the trauma of being abandoned by his mother, Olive, when he was five, the succession of stepmothers, Ronnie’s various schemes and frauds, and Cornwell’s constant feeling of not belonging, of leading a double life, make him an ideal recruit for the intelligence service.

The title comes from pigeons who are bred on the roof of a castle in Monte Carlo, where Cornwell’s father took him when he was a boy. The pigeons go through this long, dark tunnel into the air for gentlemen to shoot at. The pigeons that are winged or escape, return to the roof for the whole process to start again, giving a despairing new meaning to the word ‘Sisyphean’.

Insisting his childhood was not tragic, Cornwell quotes Graham Greene, “Childhood is the credit balance of a writer.” There are captivating insights into the inspirations behind Le Carré’s famous books. From Kim Philby’s “murky lamp” that lit his path in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974), to teaching at the “low-life prep school” that Cornwell put at the beginning of the book.

There is his father in Rick Pym, the con man father of A Perfect Spy (1986), Magnus Pym. His most famous work, his third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), was born of his disenchantment with the Secret Service and the Cold War. Cornwell was posted in Berlin when the Wall came up. With “all the Nazis wandering around West Germany,” Cornwell wonders “what had we really fought for.” His emotional response to the Berlin Wall, Cornwell says, was “a mixture of anger, disgust and empathy.” The “seamless transition from anti-Nazism to anti-Communism” and “both sides inventing the enemies they need,” fuelled the rush of “blood and anger” to find a fable for the disappointment.

John le Carré (David Cornwell) in ‘The Pigeon Tunnel’
| Photo Credit:
Apple

That novel was The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, which Cornwell says he felt “had legs.” The world agreed with the book becoming a critical and commercial success. “The world was sated with James Bond,” Cornwell says, as a clip from, Dr No, the first James Bond film,plays and the world-weary Alec Leamas was the perfect anti-Bond, though the reading public, including yours truly, saw him as a tragic figure.

There is a discussion on what makes spies tick, with Cornwell describing it as “the joy of self-imposed schizophrenia,” and Philby being “addicted to betrayal.” Writing, Cornwell says is “a form of self-discovery” where he found a home for his “larceny”.

Then we come to what Morris describes as the “despairing line” in The Secret Pilgrim (1990) — “knowing the inmost room does not contain anything” leading to the discovery of Hess’s trousers. While Cornwell sees his “life as a succession of embraces and escapes,” Morris describes him as “an exquisite poet of self hatred.”

Whichever side of the line you fall on, The Pigeon Tunnel, with its dramatic recreations, newspaper clippings, radio broadcasts, television interviews and film clips from many of Le Carré adaptations including Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (featuring an excellent Richard Burton), is as gripping as the best thriller and guaranteed to resonate for a long time to come.

The Pigeon Tunnel is presently streaming on Apple TV+