“I’ll answer any question you wish me to answer as truthfully as I can,” teases the legendary novelist in this interview conducted in the year before his passing in 2020.
As heavyweight bouts go, this is remarkably cheerful. Throughout this biographical documentary, which has legendary British espionage novelist John le Carré discussing his life’s work experiencing and cataloguing betrayal via the prompting of legendary American documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, the two voices are mostly in spry agreeance.
His father was pursued by creditors, police, and gangsters; his mother fled the family when her son was five years old; it appears to be a fitting upbringing for le Carré’s subsequent careers. “It’s not a lament, just a self-examination,” he notes, adding that he never went to therapy because he worried it would dissipate his writing’s inquisitorial strength.
At one point le Carré concedes that his most famous fictional creation, the unflappable spymaster George Smiley, was “the ideal father I never had”. The autobiographical undertow of le Carré’s writing is brought to the surface, and with Ronnie’s monstrous presence forever looming, the idea that deception and betrayal is a kind of sensual, addictive force takes shape. It is a thankfully unconventional approach to le Carré, but illustrative to long-time readers and neophytes alike.
With Mia as her own narrator, the quality that shines through is an understanding of vulnerability. Wilde embodies a young woman who feels detached from her own body, daunted by her formidable mother, and compelled to make rash decisions. The resolutions of some episodes can be time-worn, but they’re reached with real emotion. Netflix has doubled down on the trials of adolescence to mixed effect, but this is one of their better new shows.