“The Pigeon Tunnel” Is Both Delightful and Wildly Frustrating
It’s appropriate that the new film by Errol Morris, perhaps the most theoretically minded of documentarians, should provide a keen reminder that most problems of substance are also problems of form. The documentary takes its title, “The Pigeon Tunnel,” from the 2016 memoir by David Cornwell, better known by his pen name, John le Carré, and it is composed almost entirely of interviews in which the supreme spy novelist talks to Morris about his life and the people in it. (Cornwell died in 2020; the interviews in this film were conducted in 2019.) From the start, Morris makes the film’s creation part of its subject. He opens with a clip in which Cornwell, turning the tables on Morris in a way that manifestly delights the filmmaker, asks, “Who are you?,” and explains why he wants to know. Bei...
