Errol Morris' 'Standard Operating Procedure'

So not gonna come here. So wanna see it. Last Harper's all teasing me and shit.

Errol Morris is one of my favorite directors.

Wow, looks awesome. I don't think I had realized that the New Yorker piece Morris wrote last month was connected to a film. Hope it makes it to the UK.

Saw this today. It focuses very specifically on the context and story behind each of the iconic photos. It's really a necessary piece of journalism, depressing but very good.

It's not doing grrrreat business (less than $3000 per screen in 11 theaters). I'm a bit flummoxed as to why it's getting all the hits (even in good reviews) on the "recreations," at this point in his career -- a couple of them bothered me, but they always have. I found his letting that killer McNamara yak uninterrupted for 100 minutes much more problematic.

There's also the paying of interviewees thing, which doesn't bother me either (cuz really, he's NOT a journalist):

http://blogs.chicagoreader.com/film/2008/04/28/errol-morris-sop/

Yeah, documentary /= journalism, folks on both sides have to stop pretending it does.

Interview:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/features/errolmorris.asp

I actually don't really care about documentary purists. To me what makes a documentary "pure" or "impure" is whether the person is trying to uncover truths. The fact that they use various different cinematic techniques in pursuit of truth is more or less irrelevant. Style isn't about truth. Style is about style. And I make movies, proudly so. Whatever I do to put a movie together is, I think, fair game. If I were to make a badly constructed movie, it wouldn't make it any more truthful.

Going to see this tonight. Glad it came to Knoxville.

Ok, a good movie, and I'm glad it was made. I couldn't stop myself from wondering about Morris's intentions with the movie, though -- generating sympathy for the perpetrators of the crimes seems suspect, and I don't really think that's what he's trying to do with this movie. However: would it have killed Morris to interview ONE victim of any of these crimes? Could have really helped in Morris's "quest for the truth" -- this seems to be how Morris characterizes his docs, and especially this one, which is really about (I think) uncovering the truth behind each of the iconic photographs and spiraling outward from that to uncover the larger problem, etc. Perhaps interviewing a detainee proved difficult -- this is likely -- but impossible? Could there be ANY other perspective presented? And why not?

but he chose to focus on what most Americans' first thought was on seeing the photos -- who the hell does this, and why?

also, I thought the 'sympathy' was a rollercoaster throughout. The soldiers who seem most well-intentioned and to have perspective subsequently say stuff that sounds appalling.

ya i just thought it was amazing to hear lynndie england talk... i didn't really feel sympathetic but it made it very clear what small potatoes she was in the end.

That's a good answer, Morbs. There were a couple of outside opinions presented though, right? The photo expert, and the higher-up lady (though she is involved, she never worked inside Abu Ghraib?).

also, I thought the 'sympathy' was a rollercoaster throughout. The soldiers who seem most well-intentioned and to have perspective subsequently say stuff that sounds appalling.

-- Dr Morbius, Monday, June 23, 2008 4:22 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

^This is OTM. For me, Sabrina was the worst for this!

I think the (since busted) brigadier general was there for brief periods? I saw the film in March, I think, so I don't recall for sure.

Yeah, I also got the idea that they used her to show how the entire chain of command refuses to accept any responsibility for what went on there.

Much better than The Fog of War, in which Morris seemed so mesmerized by McNamara's fantastic cranium and deeply felt guilt that he failed to probe him.

ehh: i thought the fog of war was excellent, and did a better job of presenting the genuine ambiguity of o k people doing horrific things, maybe by virtue of not hitting mcnamara too hard. the gourevich/morris book of standard operating procedure's incredible, but i thought the film was way too cinematic, with slo-mo and scores and hyper-saturated clinking symbolic close-ups all hollywood-ising and distancing the contents, and also too focused on the events as anomalous incidents, rather than consequences and patterns of wartime. the book's focuson the history of abu graib excellently illustrates the depressing every-day of life there, rather than focusing on the high profile stuff.

My longer post was eaten up, so I lost what else I was going the point: you're right about the music (Danny Elfman doing Philip Glass, ugh) and the close-ups of dripping blood. It doesn't rank with his best. Yet the far cleverer McNamara is, in my mind, less interesting an object worthy of examination than how these Abu Ghraib soldiers embody the banality of evil.

*what else I was going to post

Too cinematic yeah, misses the minimalism I love about most of his work (and ooh look no Glass), but does make clear to me that those soldiers don't really "embody" anything; they were in an evil situation, and it took over.

(The explanation of those "evil" thumbsup was hella banal tho for sure)

i kind of can't remember that bit in the film so well, but somewhere between a guardian article and the book, i found all that stuff really interesting - like the muscular assessment of 'social' smiles. she doesn't come across guilt-free, like at all - i guess that's one of the better sociological parts of the film, that even the one you believe in was kind of casually involved in some ways - but it's one of the stronger revelations, that the photo isn't as it seems.

the minimalism of his work: yeah. i just thought it greatly took away from the actual feeling you get, having it all elevated to big screen status - it made these things seem like once-in-a-lifetime atrocities that had been caught for cinema, rather than things that were just going on, and happened to be photographs. i remember after watching that polanski film about the pianist in the holocaust, feeling weirdly unmoved, because although you'd seen all these horrific things, none of them gave a sense of the everyday. the book almost corroborates all those horrible wolfowitz/hoon things about casualty figures obscuring the true picture of war, but does so by illustrating how awful it was even with the killing set aside - the lack of food, the danger of walking to work or being in the wrong place, the effects of poor planning, the obscene numbers admitted to prison with 'wrong time wrong place' written on their wrap sheets. i didn't get that in the film.

I still don't understand how SOP can be "too cinematic" (mayb you need a diff adj). It's a movie!

Ebert, in fact, gets to the heart:

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/05/the_ultimate_mystery.html

I'm not sure I agree with Morris that the Americans in the photos are even "bad apples." The one who does deserve that description seems to be Charles Graner.... The others may not have been bad apples but good ones left to spoil too long in the sun of the war in Iraq.

that's pretty much the conclusion of the book that philip gourevitch did, based on the same interviews. although he's a bit less abstract about that iirc - he makes it clear that the people in the photos are symptoms of a corrupt leadership.

heard him speak last year, and gourevitch also gave another possible answer to the question upthread, why aren't there interviews with the victims? gourevitch doesn't use their names, which some people said was dehumanising, but he argued that they had been through enough and deserved to put the humiliation they were subjected to behind them. might have been a similar motive for the film - don't think eg silhouetting them would have worked.

Still think Taxi To The Dark Side was a better study of the same subject.

Agreed.

I still don't understand how SOP can be "too cinematic" (mayb you need a diff adj). It's a movie!

i just think the drama of it all, slow-mo high-saturated jail keys clanging, framed the crimes wrongly; to me the crimes are more like the zimbardo experiment than they are a series of pre-meditated attacks: it was the incremental descent of these people, becoming torturers while working in a vacuum devoid of rules or oversight, rather than the ominous workings of deviants/bad apples. i'm not saying the crimes are less awful, but i think while with the thin blue line there's an emphasis on the background and personality of the crimes (meriting an foreboding cello score or whatever), with this it's more a critique of a system, and would benefit from some of the level-headed neutrality that goes along with that.

regarding 'cinematic' - maybe it isn't the right word. i'm thinking in comparison to his earlier stuff which was, not to take away from the artistry, at least more straightforwardly presented.

The Thin Blue Line (1988) was full of reenactments, stock footage, stylized lighting, and montages, as a way of telling its subjects' stories.

xp: I thought some of that went over the line, too, but not enough to define the film for me.

i'm referring to like gates of heaven when i mention his no-frills earlier stuff; the thin blue line is something that i think the 'dressing' is quite appropriate for; ie the shuffly glass score is a part of its storytelling, part of its register.

morbs - yeah, for sure - it's only a criticism, and it's only at the forefront of my memory of the film because i'd gone in having read the book and with high stylistic expectations, so the result is what detracted from the film rather than what made it good. i still think it's a microcosm of why the film's a little overblown though; it's framed wrongly, in terms of concentrating on the shock of these events rather than the routine of these events, but that might just be my perspective.

i really ought to watch his tv series.

The kicker came near the end where they went through the photos and determined which acts portrayed constituted torture or standard operating procedure. It felt almost like the punchline to a shaggy dog story.

I saw this movie at the SF Film Festival with Morris present, though I couldn't stay through the Q&A at the end. Before the film, he was being interviewed about his previous work, and someone, who obviously felt like he was stating the obvious, equated McNamara with Rumsfeld. Morris disagreed - saying Rumsfeld was much worse.

well McNamara probably has more blood on his hands

(not defending either of those monsters btw)

I think McNamara was a smart guy that fucked up. Rumsfeld, from everything I've read, is a self-aggrandizing dumb-ass.

McNamara was a self-aggrandizing dumbass as well.

I think McNamara was in it to be "effective" and "efficient". Rumsfeld was a power-seeker, who almost ran for President.

I don't care why they were in it. That they were both self-aggrandizing dumbasses is my point. If you want to split hairs, be my guest.

If all you're going to do is restate the same sentence, then I don't feel like being your guest.

I judge by results, not intentions, and by that ruler McNamara is the bigger monster cuz he's directly responsible for more people dying.

xp Well then I guess you won't be splitting hairs.

To be honest, I'm not even sure there is enough of a difference in intentions to be making the claim that these guys aren't peas in the same pod.

I guess I give McNamara some teensy amount of credit for coming around ever so slightly to the idea that he was "wrong". I don't see Rumsfeld getting there somehow. But it's not like that thought was enough to change McNamara's strategies at the time so big whoop.

oh shit is this the abu ghraib one or