In “The Pigeon Tunnel”, Errol Morris has crafted a career-culminating work. Morris skillfully deploys and redeploys: the revelatory recreations that he has been known for since “The Thin Blue Line”; an interview with a slippery subject that surpasses that even of “The Fog of War” subject Robert McNamara; and the intellectual curiosity on display in “Fast, Cheap, & Out of Control.” He sharpens them all, reflects back on them, and yet throws it all into the pale of “productive ontological uncertainty”.
Errol joins Mike to discuss the life and career of David Cornwell, better known by his pen name, John LeCarré. In Cornwell Morris finds his ultimate subject: an avowed, unrepentant fabulist . At its core, much like the memoir that Cornwell wrote with which the film shares a title, is the insight that his spy novels are maybe even more influenced by his childhood–his con man father, his missing mother–then the few years he spent in the intelligence game. And always, behind both his work as well as Morris’ is the worry–fear? belief? assurance?–that the final room, the ultimate safe, the culminating tunnel that haunts his work is quite bereft of any clarifying meaning.
“The Pigeon Tunnel” can now be viewed on Apple+
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