Secrets and spies

Like George Smiley, the brilliant, homely anti-hero of some of his best known spy thrillers, writer John le Carré grew up feeling like an outsider. Born David Cornwell, he felt alienated from and deeply suspicious of most people around him.

Because so many journalists over the years have hounded le Carré about his espionage career, he was hard to get on camera.

In King of Spies, a documentary profile of le Carré debuting at Montreal's 28^th annual Festival international du film sur l'art (FIFA), German filmmakers Werner Köhne and André Schäfer attempt to probe the psyche of this mysterious, intensely private writer, who elevated the spy genre from sheer escapism to literature when he published his first book, in 1961, the year East Germany erected the Berlin Wall.

King of Spies tells the story of le Carré's life, but also highlights his mastery of language and dramatic tension by taking a close look at some of his best known novels, such as The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) and The Night Manager (1993). Köhne says he wanted to make the film because although le Carré is immensely popular in Germany, his oeuvre has been largely ignored by the German literary establishment.

"His work is viewed as low culture. Yet for me, he is one of the great chroniclers of contemporary history," the director said in a telephone interview from Cologne. "He is someone with an excellent sensorium for current political and economical crises and the shadow politics of the powerful. He depicts the events behind the stage."

With his insider's take on the failings of Cold War espionage and his portrayal of flawed, morally conflicted intelligence officers — such as the awkward, quietly passionate Smiley or the burnt-out loser Alec Leamas in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold — le Carré made the adventures of earlier, more glamorous imaginary spies such as James Bond seem silly.

It's fitting that two Germans succeeded in gaining access to the notoriously inaccessible writer; le Carré has an intimate connection to their country. Fluent in German, the writer was immersed in the language and culture of Goethe while studying at the University of Berne in Switzerland after the war. (At times during the film, le Carré even seems to speak English with a German accent.) It's in Berne where the Oxford-educated former civil servant was likely recruited by the British Secret Service to spy on the Eastern Bloc. At least that's what the retired KGB agent the filmmakers tracked down claims. (Le Carré refuses to discuss when he worked as a spy and what kind of work he did: "I was warned I must shut up about it," he tells the filmmakers.)

Because so many journalists over the years have hounded le Carré about his espionage career, he was hard to get on camera, says Köhne. "He is very skeptical of the media. It took a year of meeting with him in London before he agreed to work with us."

King of Spies was shot in Germany and Cornwall, on England's spectacular southern coast, where the London-based writer spends half his time. Short personal interviews are interwoven with narrated excerpts from le Carré's novels and footage from various film versions: The Constant Gardener, with Ralph Fiennes as a mild-mannered English diplomat on the trail of corrupt African politicians; The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, with Richard Burton as the aging intelligence agent Alec Leamas; and the extraordinary British television series Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1979), which featured an owlish Alec Guinness as the methodical and taciturn George Smiley.

While we never learn about le Carré's work as a spy, the film reveals how deeply he was affected by the Cold War. The disbelief he felt as a young civil servant watching the construction of the Berlin Wall drove le Carré to write his first novel, A Call for the Dead (1961). "I saw the American and Russian tanks facing each other, waving their barrels at each other and the barbed wire being erected," le Carré says. "I think I really suffered. There was a serious sense of trauma. The barricades of the new Cold War were being built on the ashes of the old one."

Le Carré wasn't simply motivated by politics, however. His troubled childhood drove him to withdraw into a fantasy life at an early age. "Spy stories were born with me. I had no idea who my mother was. She disappeared without explanation when I was five," confides the writer, who, with a full set of thick white hair and a jaunty gait, appears much younger than 78. "Everyone told me something different: some said she'd be back soon, others said she was ill, and another person told me she might be dead." Le Carré found his mother 16 years after she had left her family. She was the mother of two other children.

Le Carré's father was a con man who was "brilliant and at times compassionate but created amazing criminal fictions," recalls le Carré. Living with a father who was frequently violent and was often in jail or scrambling for cash meant that as a young man, le Carré was always waiting for disaster to strike. "These were the insecurities of my childhood. Nothing was true. So the search for truth began very early."

Le Carré created Smiley ― the central character in the novels A Murder of Quality; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Honourable Schoolboy; and Smiley's People ― because he needed a friend. "He was a figure of perfect anonymity, which I wished to be. I felt socially confused and alienated, so I invented for myself this proxy father figure. He was my companion, my secret mentor."

Smiley also embodied the Western democratic values that were so central to le Carré's worldview and his writings during the Cold War. "He stood for me [for] the decency which for better or for worse was believed to be the property of the English gentlemen."

Le Carré remains as critical of his own culture as he was when he first started writing about British spies. He remains troubled by how much hatred the British Empire left in its wake, and how unaware many Brits are about it. "It is one of the most gifted countries in the world which manages to lead itself without information from the past."

These days, le Carré, who still writes his novels out longhand, is preoccupied with Muslim fundamentalism and the impact of globalization on the developing world. In 2003, he published the essay 'The United States Has Gone Mad' in The Times, protesting the impending Iraq War. Although King of Spies provides some insight into le Carré's past and politics, the thriller writer never lets his guard down. (You sometimes get the sense that he was in the director's chair, rather than Köhne and André Schäfer.)

The filmmakers do their best to uncover the mystery that is le Carré through lengthy excerpts of his novels and the films based on them, but unfortunately this material contributes little to the narrative. One gets the sense they are trying to fill in the gaps left by a subject who refused to open up. I craved some footage of the writer talking to a family member, or having a beer at the local pub.

We only see what le Carré wanted us to see: a man who has apparently dealt with the shadows of his past with good humour and determination. In the numerous shots of him working in his well-lit study or opining on world affairs, le Carré epitomizes the good English gentleman he was educated to be; at times he seems downright dull. The nooks and crannies of his obviously complex personality are unfortunately never revealed. I guess I'll have to look to George Smiley for that.

King of Spies screens March 20, 24 and 28 at the Festival international du film sur l'art, which runs from March 18 to 28 in Montreal.