MUBI

This is an incredible bit of movie making. If you couldn’t get enough of this story when it broke then you must see this. The soundtrack is what you might expect from a Tim Burton movie and it has the effect of making the Abu Ghraib story sound like it took place in another world, which it must have seemed to its participants. The photography forensic work is fascinating and worthy of a documentary all its own, I think. The nonsense could have gone in many directions but that it went towards the sexual deserved some greater consideration by Morris or somebody being interviewed. This is one of those movies that will haunt you for a few days afterwards.

While I initally found the reconstruction elements and Danny Elfman’s score a distraction, Morris soon moves the film into a quietly powerful expose of what happens when the powerful save themselves and uses young, inexperienced soldiers to take the fall. The film works at its best when Morris simply has his subjects stare into the camera and tell their story. Morris certainly doesn’t forgive them for their actions yet he refuses to damn them for it. He simplt tries to make sense of how this could have happened.

The strongest thing about Errol Morris’ documentary is how it doesn’t concern itself with politics, but focuses on the personal stories of those actually involved in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. As usual, Morris brings the story alive with extraordinary visual imagery, complete with lyrical slow-motion shots and stunning cinematography by Robert Richardson. Unfortunately, without any kind of strong central focus, it starts to drag pretty quickly and soon becomes overlong and repetitive. Interesting, but not one of Morris’ better films. Excellent score by Danny Elfman.

Errol Morris is the greatest documentary filmmaker yet to man a camera. His latest work is STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE (2008), a film about the torture of suspected terrorists at the hands of American soldiers in a prison located in the city of Abu Ghraib in Iraq.

Alex Gibney may be the first director since Errol Morris deconstructed the documentary with GATES OF HEAVEN in 1978 to truly challenge the modern conventions of documentary filmmaking. Gibney’s latest work is the Academy Award winning TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE (2007), a film about the torture of suspected terrorists at the hands of American soldiers in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

To say that any film Errol Morris makes is about the essential subject matter he chooses to investigate is to have never seen one of his films. GATES OF HEAVEN was ostensibly about pet lovers and the extremes pet lovers go to in order to honor and love their animals. But, through the hypnotic vision created by Morris, aided by surrealistic music, stunning photography, and a psychoanalytic interviewing style, GATES OF HEAVEN culminates in an ethereal meditation on the meaning of life and death.

Alex Gibney, on the surface of things, appears to present what would be considered by most standards a fairly conventional “talking heads” style of filmmaking. But, what started with ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM (2005) and continued with TAXI, is an unusual and compelling storytelling style that owes more to the great dramatic, socially-conscious directors from Hollywood like Stanley Kramer (INHERIT THE WIND) and Oliver Stone (SALVADOR), than to doc legends like Werner Herzog and Michael Moore.

STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE could be considered in the province of cinematic lingo, a “remake”. What, you say? Obviously, it’s not a remake of a film about Abu Ghraib; rather a remake of a film in style, rather than content.

In 1988, Errol Morris made his second masterpiece, THE THIN BLUE LINE, a film about a man who may or may not be wrongfully imprisoned for murder. The film was a landmark in the history of cinema. Masterfully juxtaposing “talking head” interviews with entire sequences staged and directed by Morris in what was to become known as “re-enactments” of real-life events. Underpinned by a haunting score composed by Phillip Glass (the first of many scores Glass composed for Morris), THE THIN BLUE LINE was a scary and riveting murder mystery.

STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE is constructed using the blueprint for THE THIN BLUE LINE. The “talking heads” in this case are the soldiers involved in the scandalous abuse, juxtaposed with “re-enactments” of the now famous images of “dog piles” and “human pyramids” ; sexual humiliation and violence; including the most famous image of a man draped in black with a hood, standing on a box with wires connected to his fingers, in Christ pose. But, again, this is only ostensibly what the movie is about.

In TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE, Alex Gibney tells the story of Dilawar, a young man from Afghanistan, who starts driving a taxi from his small family farm in Yakubi to larger towns and villages in order to make a little more money. One day Diawar’s mother asks him to pick up his sisters and bring them home for the upcoming holiday. Dilawar never returns home. He is detained along with three other men suspected of carrying out a rocket attack on a nearby Army base. Director Gibney shows us in brutal and horrifying detail the torture and eventual murder of an innocent young man. By focusing on Dilawar’s family and friends, including his wife and infant daughter, Alex Gibney paints a tragic family portrait; placing a human face on the inhumanity of war.

STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE is about the extraordinary power of the visual image; the photograph, and it’s rendering of reality; perception and understanding. The Art of Photography like any art form relies on the viewer to interpret the meaning, and what the piece represents. And for Errol Morris, the question of why these soldiers tortured is not as fascinating as to why they carefully re-staged and photographed the torture, like some kind of primitive performance art.