In the contemporary documentary world, there are docs — from varying schools and approaches — and then there are Erroll Morris docs, a breed unto itself. More of an inspired doc reinventor, Morris wriggled into the genre decades ago with quirky gems as his pet-cemetery film Gates of Heaven (not to be confused with Heaven’s Gate) and the loveably loopy Vernon, Florida, then went onto more stylized production numbers such as the Oscar-winning and prisoner-subject-freeing Thin Blue Line and, among other things, intriguing portraits of singular and controversial political figures such as Robert McNamara, Donald Rumsfeld, and Steve Bannon.
Along comes another left-of-center delight, The Pigeon Tunnel, roughly related to his military-politico portraits but this time with a significant twist: the subject in the talking-head crosshairs is a literal “spy who came in from the cold,” spy-turned-thriller-novelist John le Carré. Like the earlier Morris docs on specific subjects, the filmmaker himself makes his presence slyly known, as the sly and cleverly manipulative off-camera inquisitor. This time around, though, Morris’s presence is more, well, present — as an unseen interviewer but questioning voice — who le Carré himself directly addresses.
In the film’s opening moments, le Carré — who once worked in Army intelligence — switches up roles with his interviewer, asking, “Who are you? Sometimes you’re a spectral figure, sometimes you’re God, and sometimes you’re present.” Le Carré continues, “this is a performance art. You need to know whether you’re performing to a trade union, an elite audience, you need to know something about the ambitions, about the person you’re talking to.”