Illuminating truth: Standard Operating Procedure by Errol Morris

I stumbled across Errol Morris a few years back at the Melbourne International Film Festival, which screened double features presenting pairs of his remarkable interviews with remarkable people. He has a way of zooming in on interviewees’ faces (is it true that he wears a camera on his head or is that an urban myth?) that opens them up to close, close scrutiny, and he manages to probe deep motives. Then The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (which came out in 2003 but took a year to get to Australia) was a stunning exploration of a hugely influential man ambivalent about his own legacy. Now comes Standard Operating Procedure, Morris’s take on the Abu Ghraib ‘human pyramid photo’ scandal in Iraq.

Morris, as always, offers amazing access to his viewers. He interviews a number of the American prison guards (the worst offenders have been barred from him), some in or just out of prison. Using the many photos taken by these guards as the lynchpin of his movie, he slowly unpeels the ways in which unsadistic prison guards gradually turned inhuman, debasing and, yes, torturing the Iraqi inmates. Each piece of the sordid story is locked into place like pieces into a jigsaw puzzle. Interviewees include the sacked, female head of the American prison complexes in Iraq and the military investigator who prosecuted the guards. I felt ill as I watched, thinking thoughts such as ‘we’re the good guys of the world and this is what we did?’ Nonetheless I was compelled to watch on. And Morris, while addressing one set of criminal events, those underlying the photo scandals, sets up a number of even more important unspoken questions that he only answers via interviewees’ words and assembled photographs: was there even worse, terrible torture going on there (the answer is clearly yes)? Was all this sanctioned on high as ‘standard operating procedure’? Yes, methinks. Is this a sign of America adrift?

Grab the DVD and see it, that’s all I can say. View it for two reasons. Firstly, this is an invaluable lens focused on the Iraqi occupation, a debacle that will haunt our children. But more importantly, Standard Operating Procedure is superb documentary filmmaking by a maestro at the peak of his craft and art.