‘Try as you might, you can’t have complete control of re-enactments. Reality is too rich in detail. You’re bound to get something wrong. Or bound to fail to get something right.’ — Errol Morris, #79 (scroll down)
‘I have no trouble calling myself an entertainer. I should be so lucky. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be held accountable for factual errors and omissions.’ — Errol Morris, #88, (scroll down)
I’ve been a fan of Errol Morris’ documentaries for several years now, & each of them, I think, warrants ambivalence if not distrust. Looking back to the earliest films, Gates of Heaven (1978) & Vernon, Florida (1982), two documentaries marked by a much greater fidelity to raw footage than his later & current work, I am struck by what now looks like reticence: Morris’ touch back then was lighter, unbolstered, I suspect, by the essential success of The Thin Blue Line (1988), whose ultimate victory was to save a man’s life, in no small part by way of a series of reenactments whose style has since become a genre in itself, especially on television (America’s Most Wanted, the entire Bill Kurtis A&E franchise, et al. — to say nothing of the additional matter of his own short-lived series & commercial work).
So it’s been for the last twenty years: each of Morris’ feature films has relied on reenactment of some kind, if only the drastic focus-pulls & blinding blow-outs of cinematographer Robert Richardson.
This post was prompted by his latest effort, Standard Operating Procedure, which takes as its subject the photographs (& photographers) from Abu Ghraib. His recent blog post on the subject is illuminating & a welcome addition to the film itself.
