His last speech in front of the camera a year before his death: The master of the British spy novel John le Carré tells his story almost without filters in a documentary film produced jointly by two of his sons.
“John le Carré: The Pigeon Tunnel” – also the title of his 2016 memoir – was signed by Oscar-winning American documentary filmmaker Errol Morris (“The Fog of War”) and will be released on Apple TV+ on Friday.
This project, started in 2019, is the result of “fortunate circumstances,” Simon Cornwell, one of the four sons of the writer who died in 2020, tells AFP.
“A friend introduced us to Errol, who had the idea of doing something around our father. He happened to be an admirer of her work himself. “The machine started quite quickly,” he explains.
The film is filled with excerpts from television and film adaptations of his works and interspersed with an interview with the author of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. “It was a good time for him to talk and look back,” his other son, Stephen Cornwell, told AFP.
What no one predicted, however, was that this would be the last testimony of writer David Cornwell, whose final novel, The Spy Who Loved Books, was published posthumously in 2021.
“His death completely changed the dynamic of the film because it became his will,” notes Stephen Cornwell.
Despite the demeanor of a commentator detached from his life, the novelist, whose more than 60 million copies have been sold worldwide, often appears moved; his voice sometimes chokes with emotion.
“It is a picture of our father that we had never seen before,” assures his son Simon.
For example, when he talks about his mother, Olive Gassy, who left home as a child. All he inherited from her was a suitcase that she took with her when she fled and which, in his eyes, symbolizes “the only evidence” of this event.
“Uncomfortable”
It’s an event he “never really talked about,” says his son Simon. “Even within the context of strict family constraints.”
He also returns to his studies at Oxford, without ever revealing how he was recruited by MI6, and then to the Kim Philby affair, the British double agent who gave the cover of many of his compatriots to the KGB. This revelation ended his intelligence career.
He also makes an effort to recall the Stanley Mitchell episode and the denunciation of his communist comrades in Oxford in the middle of the Cold War. “Of course it was terrible. I betrayed Stanley,” he says in the documentary. But “someone had to do it,” he continues, before adding that his “friend” was “on the wrong side of history.”
“Are you sure you were on the right page?” Errol Morris asks him. “Of course not,” the author answers, before pausing for a few seconds, visibly moved. “I think this is the moment in the film where he feels really uncomfortable,” analyzes Stephen.
“He has never shown such vulnerability. “He didn’t let it show,” adds Simon, for whom the film also shows his “humanity and the fact that he loved people, that he lived in the present.”
The other interesting aspect of the film is that it looks back at his creative process. “One thing he didn’t really talk about,” Stephen said. “He was a humble person and was uncomfortable talking about it.”
Another destabilizing topic: his love and his extramarital life, which fueled a current biography. “I’m not here to talk about my sex life,” replies John le Carré laconically.