Review of Standard Operating Procedure (2008) by Eyal D — 15 May 2008

The eerie and haunting new investigative documentary by Errol Morris is a heavy-handed, ultimately depressing look at the awfully unremorseful people responsible for producing the photos of prisoner humiliation that took place in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, an act of atrocity that the world was eventually shown and allowed to judge. The maddeningly irresponsible soldiers who took the photos and participated in the humility of their victims are interviewed just a few years later and what is most striking is that they, for the most part, seem to lack introspection and still hardly accept or even understand accountability, even while sitting in prison all this time after being indicted for their heinous crimes.

Yet what is most noticeable in this film from famed documentary filmmaker Morris is that he is now a very well established director with lots of resources and tools and has somehow managed to pull off every trick in the cinematic technique book to make his movie visually stimulating to its audience. From surreal re-enactments filmed in oblique angles to special visual effects dazzling about the screen and even a gripping original soundtrack by Danny Elfman, no less, Morris has us busily reacting to trickery and illusions. This is perhaps to mask the fact, more so than any other, that his film is, despite its ever-important topic, low on substance.

The effects are used to enhance what is essentially a film that has its subject matters talking directly at the screen and thereâ??s only so much talk that can generate this much interest, especially when it is coming from its seemingly low intellect, trailer trash types that seem to have an excuse and justification for everything theyâ??ve done. They keep repeating how they did not realize that their behaviour was criminal. That only lower ranked soldiers got reprimanded is telling of an unjust political system that does not weigh in responsibility at the very top.

The best scene in the film is the one where one of the key investigators into these crimes describes how he sifted through confiscated photographs to determine which ones constituted a criminal act different from those abhorring ones that are considered Standard Operating Procedure, from which the film stems its title. From all accounts, The President had no choice but to apologize on behalf of the USA for a public humiliation that caused the country socio-political grief but, as seen here, very little else happened other than the fact that ignorant scapegoats got punished and the system itself got away with murder, literally. Appalling whether the film works completely or not.