The current DVD release of Errol Morris’ searing documentary, Standard Operating Procedure, has everything and nothing to do with the U.S. presidential race, now in its final days.
Nothing because SOP has an astonishingly narrow perspective. It is specifically an analysis of the infamous Abu Ghraib Iraq prison photos.
These shocking photos, taken by U.S. military police, documented their own incidents of the humiliation and torture of Iraqi prisoners of war, most of whom have proven to be innocent of any war and/or terrorist activities. The Americans involved, however, are plenty guilty, yet only a few have been tried and convicted, all of them the low-ranking grunts who are seen in the incriminating photos. Morris’ film is a masterpiece of obsessive detective work into the taking, distribution, cover-up, manipulation and explosive publication of the photos and their meaning.
Yet, in this specificity, SOP has everything to do with Obama vs. McCain. That is because what Morris so exhaustively depicts in his film speaks to the disturbing disconnect between reality and politics in America.
For example, more ink has been spilled and broadcast time wasted recently on moose hunter Sarah Palin’s wardrobe than on the Iraq War and America’s torture tactics. As a result, Morris is left squirming in disbelief as we hook up for a Sun Media interview.
“I don’t even know how best to describe it because the issues are so complex,” Morris says about SOP and what it uncovers. “Certainly the issue of America’s place in the world as cop or liberator — however you want to imagine it — is so convoluted, in particular in this war. And it becomes more convoluted all the time. I sit and watch the progression of current affairs with a kind of horror and nausea. I don’t know how else to describe it. I would say it is a visceral reaction.”
Iraq has obviously divided America, Morris says. “People who are for and against it have very strong feelings about this war, myself included. But just watching the (presidential) debates ... I have trouble watching them because they frighten me, they horrify me. In America, the issue has evolved again into a sporting event: ‘Was the surge successful or not?’ As if that was really the issue confronting the country.
“That is probably as disturbing as anything because what is at issue here is our conception of ourselves and who we are: Who we are as a people, who we are as a country.”
Trust Errol Morris — Oscar-winner for his 2003 Vietnam-era documentary The Fog of War — to see the big picture when he deconstructs small pictures that depict human behaviour on an everyday basis.
Yet SOP is now his most divisive films in a vigorous career that spans three decades since Gates of Heaven (1978). “I suppose, if I had thought more carefully about it, I probably wouldn’t have done it at all,” Morris offers. “Because making a movie about this kind of material takes its toll on you. It’s just depressing in its own right. Not much fun!
“But I’ve been obsessed with photography — and war photography — for quite a while now and there was a mystery about these photographs (from Abu Ghraib). I would say there is still a mystery about these photographs but some questions I had about them have been answered.
“So I made a movie that is not what people wanted or expected and that I am not sorry about. I’m unapologetic!”
Nor are apologies needed for the notion that Standard Operating Procedure should influence voters when they decide America’s fate on Tuesday.
bruce.kirkland@sunmedia.ca
