‘Standard Operating Procedure’ filmmaker goes past standard procedures for documentaries

Published 12:43 pm Thursday, May 15, 2008

In recent years Errol Morris, an Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker, has turned from studies of oddball characters (as in his classic about pet cemeteries, “Gates of Heaven”) to overtly political films.

His new one, “Standard Operating Procedure,” is about the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, and a somber experience indeed. However, Morris, who recently came to the area to promote the film, is still the bouncy, voluble person he has always been. (I last interviewed him 20 years ago.)

I asked Morris about the fact that the film has been criticized by some for shooting new footage that critics have called “re-enactments” but Morris terms “illustrations.” Using re-enactments is sometimes considered tacky in documentaries, and, in this case, as a kind of cheapening of a serious subject.

“I don’t know,” said Morris. “It’s the way I tell a story — making people think about what I’ve been thinking about. You hear someone use a line (in an interview), and I’ll want to illustrate it. It’s an exclamation point, a way of saying, ‘Look at this.’ The odd details can do that.

“When someone tells you a story, they’re doing a re-enactment, with words. It’s their attempt to capture a past experience.”

He also rejected the idea that because his films look good, with a Hollywood sheen and a driving Danny Elfman score, they are less credible as nonfiction. “Truth isn’t guaranteed by natural light or a hand-held camera,” he noted.

Morris said he was fascinated by the photographs themselves, by when exactly they were taken, in what order — and why. When he saw photographs of a bloodied Iraqi prisoner who died in custody taken by Sabrina Harman, the former Army reservist convicted in the abuse scandal, he said, “I remember thinking, ‘She’s a monster.’ Then I learned that he was killed by the CIA, that she had nothing to do with his death.”

By reading her letters home, Morris discovered Harman was taking pictures in part because she wanted to document what was happening. And, he adds, still amazed, “She had wanted to be a forensic photographer.” Morris said the death has not been explained, but “Sabrina spent a year in prison. Is the crime photography, or is it murder?”

When I said the movie has an almost obsessive need to lay out exactly what happened on the night of the most notorious photographs, Morris quickly added, “You can take out the ‘almost.’ ” He did so much research (a million and a half words of transcript) that a book, co-written with New Yorker writer Philip Gourevitch, is being published under the same title. Morris also has poured enormous effort into his lengthy New York Times blog, Zoom.

“I think there’s something to be gained by looking at small things,” he said. Sounds like standard operating procedure for his career.