Errol Morris is our preeminent investigative documentarian. His Thin Blue Line helped reverse a murder conviction. In The Fog of War he got Robert McNamara to break down and admit that the Vietnam War was a mistake. Standard Operating Procedure, his latest investigation, focuses on the nefarious goings on in the Abu Ghraib prison camp, heinous events that were brought to the world's attention when incriminating photos of the torture, humiliation and even murder that took place there under the auspices of the U.S. Military command in Iraq. Though Americans have for the most part turned away from depictions of the ugly war, I think this is the movie that will make a difference. Because it was not only made by a diligent investigator, but by a brilliant filmmaker as well. It has none of the shenanigans of a Michael Moore movie. Morris is barely in evidence. He lets the people speak and the viewers draw their own conclusion. He is not making propaganda; he makes art.
Errol Morris was drawn to making Standard Operating Procedure through his love of photography, particularly war photography. After seeing the notorious photos from the Abu Ghraib prison camp, the ones that showed U.S. soldiers taunting, humiliating and torturing Iraqi prisoners, including the now infamous man in a hood, standing in water, electrodes attached to his body, Morris wanted to know more. Those photos represent the psychological low point of the Iraqi war debacle. It's as if the mask of a benevolent democracy was removed to reveal the American monster that lurked beneath the fake façade. America's status in the world became irreparably diminished and it could no longer claim moral superiority. Morris wanted to learn more about the circumstances surrounding the taking of those photographs. And he found out.
David Hershkovits: And what was it about the photos that made you want to find out more.
Errol Morris: I had been interested in photography, interested in war photography in particular for many, many years. I had been toying with the idea of making a movie about war photography.
DH: So when you saw these photos, did it spark something connected with war photography?
EM: They intrigued me for many, many, many reasons. Very early on, I had read Susan Sontag's book The Pain of Others. I had also read her piece that appeared in The New York Times Magazine called "Regarding the Torture of Others," specifically about the Abu Ghraib photographs. She railed against posed war photographs and how posing ruins the authenticity of a photograph. And I found it all really, really, really interesting. Because she herself acknowledged that these were posed photographs. And the photograph that I'm really speaking of in particular is the photograph we've seen with MPs smiling, looking at the camera. And part of what makes those photographs so peculiar is the fact that they were taken by the soldiers themselves and you can see that the soldiers are clearly posing in them, posing for the camera. And the question in my mind was, were all of these scenes or some of these scenes posed? And if they were posed, in what sense were they posed?
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