I was really excited to see Errol Morris’ latest documentary film, Standard Operating Procedure, an investigation into the controversial photos taken of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib. My excitement stemmed, in large part, from seeing Danny Elfman score a documentary film about war torture; of course, I was curious about the nature of and inspiration behind the photographed abuse as well. Though, while Mr. Elfman held up his end of the bargain, I was, at the end of the movie, very disappointed with the very low level of insight SOP produced. And they say a picture’s worth a thousands words…
It seems that SOP’s only real revelation about the abuse at Abu Ghraib was the final verdict surrounding which of the controversial photographs contained evidence of torture and which depicted Standard Operating Procedure. While it is certainly important to distinguish between humane interrogational methods and those which cross the line, I’m not sure that this clarification alone made the film worthwhile. I think I might have appreciated this movie more if it had been more socially comprehensive; at least a few interviews with American and Iraqi civilians would have put the photographs in larger context. The scandal at Abu Ghraib isn’t only worth examining from the inside; the media coverage and cultural reaction surrounding the outbreak of the photographs is just as important to analyzing the whole scenario. The non-stop string of military personnel interviews seemed as unnatural to film as war is to human decency; maybe this was the effect Errol Morris was going for, but in order to expose a situation, I think it’s best to take the issue out of its element.
I could have done without all the dramatic reenactments and the overabundance of unnecessary graphics. A great portion of Standard Operating Procedure is dedicated to determining exactly how many cameras took pictures at the prison, which photographs belonged to each photographer, and what time elapsed before, during, and between each frame. The conclusions reached about the cameras seem to have no real relevance to the rest of the film. I would have rather seen Morris give a better presentation of the psychology behind photographing torture in a way that’s so obviously incriminating.
The woman who started the string of picture taking read a letter she’d written to her partner back home in order to clarify her motives; according to this poorly written account, the reason she began taking pictures was so that she might reveal the ‘shit the army does.’ Yet the woman left out the most important part about exposing her pictures: she never turned them in. It seems that Morris is satisfied with her insincere and incomplete expression about why the first photograph was taken, and his other subjects never offer any additional insight about why other participants joined in to take thousands more pictures. One of the documentary’s more charismatic and insightful interviewees justly proclaimed that no one would have ever known or cared about what happened at Abu Ghraib if there hadn’t been any pictures. And so I wish that SOP had focused on those pictures and why they were captured instead of the cameras used and the minute distinctions between lawful interrogation and torture. It would have been a far more interesting film.
