STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE

By simply listening and never judging his subjects, Morris has made a film that offers a fascinating perspective on one of the biggest foreign policy disasters in American history.

In May 2004, I was in Belgium, staying with a very astute and attractive political journalist. I had been travelling around Europe for a few weeks, spreading goodwill on behalf of my home country, until some sick pictures hit every major newspaper on the planet that May morning. €œHow could your country do this?!€ my Belgian friend said to me in a very upset manner, waving a Belgian newspaper in my face. Those pictures from Abu Ghraib made the rest of my trip much more challenging. People looked at me differently, and were eager to engage me in political discussions, no matter what country I was in. Those awful pictures, forever changed the way that the rest of the world looked at America. Invading Iraq was bad enough€Gitmo was bad enough€but those pictures€just pushed it over the edge...how could the great heroes of the free world have fallen so far? American innocence was gone. Following up his Oscar-winning documentary The Fog of War, filmmaker Errol Morris points his camera to these new pariahs, the American military personnel who smiled at humiliated prisoners in the iconic Abu Ghraib photos, and those who photographed them. He interviews the key figures, most notably Lynndie England, the young woman who most prolifically featured in the photos, and who possibly is the poster child for US foreign policy failure. Morris shoots his subjects face-on, and if there is any possibility to empathise with these people, Morris challenges you to find a way by lingering the camera on his subjects for just a few seconds too long after their statements are finished, just enough to make you realize that these people are indeed human. The jist of the interviews is that there was some shady goings on way up the ladder (all the way to the White House, it is implied) regarding torture, and that a low-ranking officer, Charles Graner (the big guy with the €˜tashe and huge glasses) was basically left in charge of this filthy, overcrowded prison with little to no supervision or direction. Graner, who is currently serving a 10-year prision sentence, was not allowed to be interviewed for the film. Not only did Graner orchestrate the bizarre €œpre-interrogation€ techniques, but he also had affairs with both Lynndie England and Megan Ambuhl, two girls working with him at the prison. There€™s also an interesting Jerry Springer twist on the story €“ Graner impregnated England and married Ambuhl. Matters of the heart are crucial to England, whose testimony to Morris is amongst the most chilling performances of the year. While most films dealing with the Iraq War have been unquestionably awful, Standard Operating Procedure is a rare success. Though the film has a narrow focus, it is a fascinating study about the power of photography and the reality outside of the frame. As such, SOP looks amazing; the re-enactments are slow and artistic, reminding me of something Trent Reznor or David Lynch might have come up with, all the while creeping under a Danny Elfman score. By simply listening and never judging his subjects, Morris has made a film that offers a fascinating perspective on one of the biggest foreign policy disasters in American history.

rating: 4

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