John le Carre

THE PIGEON TUNNEL: a great storyteller’s story, told at last

by
Photo caption: John le Carré in THE PIGEON TUNNEL. Courtesy of AppleTV.

The espionage novelist John le Carré was one of our greatest storytellers over the past sixty years, and, in The Pigeon Tunnel, the great documentarian Errol Morris cajoles le Carré (real name David Cromwell) to tell his own life story – and what a story it is.

I love the twists and turns in le Carré’s stories, which are set in the world which le Carré himself experienced in his youth as a Cold War British spy. But the underlying theme of le Carré’s work is that his characters are engaged in the highest stakes when it really doesn’t matter who wins;. The comic strip character Pogo wisely told us: We have met the enemy and he is us. The spymasters are incented by their own bureaucratic imperatives and the gamesmanship itself, not by righteousness or utility. His credo seems to be, rage against the machine, with futility.

Indeed, the title of the film stems from a most unsettling and revelatory image from the young le Carré’s trip with his father to Monaco – a grim analogy about the hopeless position of those who are pawns in the games of others.

What formed the cynical rage behind the cultured and ever so pleasant le Carré? As Morris probes le Carré’s childhood, we learn of his father, a sociopath and career con artist, a man so psychotically selfish that his mother abandoned her sons as the only way to escape their father.

Le Carré also explains the impact on him of the British traitor Kim Philby, the pivotal moment of his time in British espionage, which cemented Le Carrie’s own fascination with betrayal.

It is important for le Carré to take the measure of Morris as interviewer/interrogator. It is so interesting that le Carré/Cromwell’s storytelling (the means? the depth? the very content?) depends on whom he is engaged with.

Erroll Morris has created some of the best ever American documentary films, including Gates of Heaven and The Thin Blue Line. He is the master of the interview doc, where he uses a gizmo to photograph his subjects while they maintain direct eye contact with him; he has employed the technique to let Robert McNamara (The Fog of War) and Donald Rumsfeld (The Unknown Known) reveal more of themselves than they intended and to introduce us to the woman who kidnapped a Mormon missionary as a sex slave and later cloned her pet dogs (Tabloid) and the designer of execution techniques who denied the Holocaust (Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A Leuchter, Jr.).

Many le Carré novels and stories have been made into excellent films, which are available to stream, including

My favorite is the 1979 Alec Guinness version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which is not currently available to stream, but you can find the DVD.

The Pigeon Tunnel is streaming on, AppleTV.

OUR KIND OF TRAITOR: Skarsgård steals this robust thriller

by
Naomie Harris and Ewan McGregor in OUR KIND OF TRAITOR. Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society.

Our Kind of Traitor is a robust globe-trotting thriller, enlivened by a lusty Stellan Skarsgård and played out in a series of stunning set pieces.  A meek Everyman (Ewan McGregor) is a tag-along on his high-powered wife’s trip to Cairo.   Nursing a drink after a tiff with said wife (the sleek Naomie Harris from 28 Days Later… and a couple of Bond films), he is inveigled into joining a crew of partying Russians and becomes entangled in an intrigue that puts entire families at stake – including his own.

It turns out that our protagonist has been randomly plucked from the humdrum by Dima (Skarsgård), the top money launderer for the Russian Mafia, who is trying to get British intelligence to help his family escape from his murderous colleagues.  The story having been adapted from a John le Carré novel, the dour British spy (Damian Lewis from Homeland) on the case is being hindered at every turn by a thoroughly corrupt British law enforcement and intelligence bureaucracy, with the rot reaching up to Cabinet level.

Ewen McGregor and Stellan Skarsgaard in OUR KIND OF TRAITOR

The very best thing about Our Kind of Traitor is Stellan Skarsgård’s performance.   Dima is loud, flamboyant and profoundly course. Skarsgård has filled his career with brooding roles, but here he gets to play the life of the party, and he is hilarious – and steals the movie.

Our Kind of Traitor also looks great as it takes us from Russia (shot in Finland) to Cairo (Morocco) to Switzerland to London to Paris.  Director Susanna White is a veteran (21 directing credits on IMDb), but Our Kind of Traitor is her first big budget action movie.    The success of the film revolves around a series of spectacular set pieces, and White pulls it off masterfully.

Our Kind of Traitor isn’t as good as the best of le Carré’s work (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, for instance), but it’s damn entertaining.  I saw the final four plot twists coming, but by then I was hooked, so I still enjoyed the film.  And, adapting to the post-Cold War world, le Carré may have become even more cynical. 

I saw Our Kind of Traitor (with The Wife) at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) at a screening with director Susanna White.  If you’re looking for an intelligent summer thriller for adults, this is your movie. You can stream it on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Redbox.

DVD/Stream of the Week: OUR KIND OF TRAITOR – Skarsgård steals this robust thriller

by

Naomie Harris and Ewan McGregor in OUR KIND OF TRAITOR. Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society.
Naomie Harris and Ewan McGregor in OUR KIND OF TRAITOR. Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society.

Our Kind of Traitor is a robust globe-trotting thriller, enlivened by a lusty Stellan Skarsgård and played out in a series of stunning set pieces. A meek Everyman (Ewan McGregor) is a tag-along on his high-powered wife’s trip to Cairo. Nursing a drink after a tiff with said wife (the sleek Naomie Harris from 28 Days Later… and a couple of Bond films), he is inveigled into joining a crew of partying Russians and becomes entangled in an intrigue that puts entire families at stake – including his own.

It turns out that our protagonist has been randomly plucked from the humdrum by Dima (Skarsgård), the top money launderer for the Russian Mafia, who is trying to get British intelligence to help his family escape from his murderous colleagues. The story having been adapted from a John le Carré novel, the dour British spy (Damian Lewis from Homeland) on the case is being hindered at every turn by a thoroughly corrupt British law enforcement and intelligence bureaucracy, with the rot reaching up to Cabinet level.

The very best thing about Our Kind of Traitor is Stellan Skarsgård’s performance. Dima is loud, flamboyant and profoundly course. Skarsgård has filled his career with brooding roles, but here he gets to play the life of the party, and he is hilarious – and steals the movie.

Our Kind of Traitor also looks great as it takes us from Russia (shot in Finland) to Cairo (Morocco) to Switzerland to London to Paris. Director Susanna White is a veteran (21 directing credits on IMDb), but Our Kind of Traitor is her first big budget action movie. The success of the film revolves around a series of spectacular set pieces, and White pulls it off masterfully.

Our Kind of Traitor isn’t as good as the best of le Carré’s work (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, for instance), but it’s damn entertaining. I saw the final four plot twists coming, but by then I was hooked, so I still enjoyed the film. And, adapting to the post-Cold War world, le Carré may have become even more cynical.

I saw Our Kind of Traitor earlier this year at the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival at a screening with director Susanna White. If you’re looking for an intelligent summer thriller for adults, this is your movie.  Our Kind of Traitor is available to rent on DVD from Netflix (and coming soon to Redbox) and to stream from Amazon Instant, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: John le Carre’s great whodunit

by

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is the new film version of the classic John le Carre spy novel.  The British have learned that the Soviets have planted a mole – their own double agent – near the very top of British secret intelligence service.  Only the old spymaster George Smiley, having been forced out to pasture, is beyond suspicion.  Only Smiley has the intellectual brilliance, institutional knowledge and ruthless doggedness needed to ferret out the traitor.  Gary Oldman plays George Smiley.

It’s a great tale, and the movie is good.  Oldman is joined by an impressive cast, inlcuding Colin Firth Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Mark Strong, Ciaran Hinds, Benedict Cumberbatch and Toby Jones.  Tom Hardy and Mark Strong are especially good.

I would be more enthusiastic about this film, but I harken back to the 1979 television miniseries version of the same book, starring Alec Guinness in perhaps his best role. That miniseries had even better performance by Guinness, of course, and Ian Richardson, Sian Phillips and Patrick Stewart.  It’s available on DVD, and I recommend that you rent it.