Review of Standard Operating Procedure (2013) by Trevor J — 02 May 2008

Errol Morris has long been a favorite director of mine, if in part because of the artistic controversy he seems to stem with every piece he makes. His films have long added to and confounded the debate over what truly constitutes a documentary, and what the goal of the doc filmmaker should be. He is, at his essence, a storyteller; one who's interest and peculiarly attuned knack for discovering real-life potboilers and human interest stories have entertained and provoked filmmakers and critics for nearly three decades now. In his newest feature, [i]Standard Operating Procedure[/i], Morris delves even deeper into controversy with his attempt to reveal as yet unknown tales behind the incidents at Abu Ghraib. As opposed to [i]Taxi to the Dark Side[/i], the masterful work by Alex Gibney which sought out to be a comprehensive examination of the entire world of systematic American torture, [i]SOP[/i] takes a less categorical approach, telling the personal story of those soldiers involved in the now infamous photos of prisoner humiliation. In fact, one of the perplexing things about this doc is how Errol Morris seems to shy away from those elemnts that carry the most weight in the debate about treatment of detainees. Almost no discussion is expended on the detainees themselves, very little attention spent on the question as to whether what the soldiers were doing was even [i]immoral[/i]. Morris may believe that the viewer already has their own opinions coming into the theatre regarding these actions, and instead focuses on the story the soldiers have to tell; it being a story of a group of young individuals, caught up in the brutalities and severe boredom of war, who made exceedingly bad decisions. The worst of those decisions, it is implied, is the idea to photograph their exploits, which led to their downfall. Morris uses the photos as a broader metaphor about the interpretation of images, their truths and their distortions, and the media-friendly society that propels them. This message is somewhat compromised, however, by the style that Morris chooses to employ in making this film. Morris has always made films that are dependent upon interviews and very talk-heavy. His use of reenactments and b-roll footage has always had a creative as well as a functional value. In [i]The Thin Blue Line[/i], Morris used these cutaways to reconstruct a murder scene from the different vantage points of the witnesses to demonstrate the unreliability of certain eyewitness testimonies. In [i]The Fog of War[/i], he used it to illustrate certain facts and complex war theories. At his best, Morris fills the screen with coverage that is both beautiful to watch, and serves to emphasize certain points or create juxtapositional connections. They are both aesthetic and practical. In [i]SOP[/i], however, very little of his artificial footage is used for anything but extranneous exposition. It is all wonderfully made, but rarely could I identify the point to its existence. When talking about the use of dogs to disorient the prisoners, Morris feels the need to trot out slow-motion footage of a dog chomping at the camera. When one soldier tells of her dream of an exploding helicopter, Morris takes the almost laughable step of actually recreating that as well. It's always beautifully shot, and when combined with Danny Elfman's score (Elfman doing his best Philip Glass impression here), it's a sensual treat, but I couldn't escape the feeling that Morris was just creating footage for a lack of anything else to cut to.

At first, it seemed like Morris was actually on the side of the "bad apples" theory, by focusing so exclusively on the behavior of the soldiers and not on the administrations that tolerated or encouraged it, or on the men in the prison who endured it, but by the end Morris has constructed an interesting thoughtpiece about men and women who he sees to have been hosed by a conflagration of a media frenzy and a need to place blame. The photos, he suggests, are an easy way for that blame to be placed. We can see the soldiers doing this stuff, after all...look, there they are! That one has a leash around the detainee's neck, that one is laying atop a pile of naked inmates! The intereviews suggest, however, a group of soldiers who have their own moral confusions, their own troubled lives, and their own regrets, who may or may not have been given the role of scapegoats in a national scandal. One of the most interesting points made toward the end of the film is the idea that the humiliation the detainees suffered is not even the real torture...the real torture happens afterwards, in the intrrogation rooms, where no cameras are allowed to go. It's difficult to feel sorry for these soldiers, given the very public evidence of their misdeeds, but also difficult not to sympathize with them when so very aware of their humanity after watching this doc. Add to that the internally conflicting notion of what these inmates might like to do to American soldiers, and it's tough to find a place to stand with regard to judgment. Which is one of the reasons I so love Errol Morris. His work twists me in knots, making me ask questions, filling my head with all sorts of contradictory impulses. I suppose when looking at his vast canon of material, that it can be said his works constitute an epistemological examination of the American response to injustice and the absurd. Just what are we to think of these people?, he seems to ask. The answer, he suggests, is never black and white.

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