| "When you see a picture, you don't see outside the frame." |
[Apr. 25th, 2008|01:16 am] |
Standard Operating Procedure
dir. Errol Morris
"I divide the photographs into three categories, roughly speaking. When Sabrina Harman first walks into the prison in 2003, she takes these pictures of a prisoner named Taxi Driver. There he is, stripped naked, panties on his head in some horrible stress position, food deprivation, sleep deprivation... they walk in on this, this is not something that they created. Sabrina takes a set of what I would describe as verite photographs, documentary photographs. Then the pictures change...the pictures I'd say, the second category, the pictures that actually have American soldiers in them along with prisoners, often the soldiers are posing in the pictures, smiling, thumbs up... and the third category is the strangest category of all, which is the photographs that have been created for the camera. In some sense these photographs were the reason why these things occurred. In other words, they were created so that someone could take a picture of them. Really interesting. The prisoner named Gus, Lynddie holding Gus on a leash. The picture of Gilligan standing on the box with wires...this is an amazing part of the story, the wires were put on so they could take the picture--click--and the wires are taken off. I sometimes describe it as the Cindy Sherman from hell... things that were created so that someone could take a picture. All very very very interesting."
What to really say about Morris' new film... I've included the above quote from his Q&A following the film at tonight's premiere, as well as another below, because his own words can probably describe the film better than I could. Standard Operating Procedure serves as perhaps his most powerful film in my opinion, one that dismisses the usual playful Morris-esque facial cutaways and instead carefully trains its eye on this twisty story of how photography played a key role in the Abu Ghraib convictions--a blame game that's made Morris position himself as "Outraged Citizen" before Filmmaker.
Featuring a parade of uncensored photos that somehow look different in this film than they did in the media, and penetrating interviews with key figures such as Lynddie England, Sabrina Harman, Tim Dugan, and Megan Ambuhl Graner, Morris uncovers a truth about Abu Ghraib that we as American citizens were too quick to ignore. We thought we saw the truth of Abu Ghraib in the horrifying photos, and as Morris points out, it ended there. A veteran maker of moving images, it is fitting that the role photography played in the Abu Ghraib 'scandal' sparked a curiosity in Morris that unsurprisingly led him on a journey that picked at a festering wound until the truth that existed beyond the photo frames began to bleed.
Morris is pissed off. And he's naming names.
Among some of those names are the camera makes and models that were used by three military personnel whose photos played an integral role in the Abu Ghraib scandal. The camera perhaps plays the largest role in this film of anyone. Standard Operating Procedure enters theaters today, Friday April 25. You'll probably have to do a little searching to find it near you, but it's worth the journey. We were all quick to judge what we saw in the media four years ago. Maybe now it's time to look a bit closer.
"You asked me another question... you said that you saw somewhere lurking in the wings, an outraged citizen, and you're absolutely correct, that is what you see. And here's one of the things that I'm really truly outraged by: The wrong people took the fall, and photography helped in this very very odd way. The best example I can give you is this picture of Sabrina Harman--thumbs up, big smile on her face, over the body of an Iraqi prisoner, al-Jamadi. I remember seeing the photograph.. the first time I saw this photograph, I thought, "she's a monster." There she is, juxtaposed with the body, gloating! She's implicated, obviously, maybe even responsible. What do I find out--I find out that al-Jamadi was killed by a CIA interrogator, and the entire brass of the prison was involved in covering up that murder, sneaking him out with an IV on a gurney...that's not just a couple of soldiers that planned this, everyone is involved! The colonel that runs the place! The top ranking military police, they're all involved! Then the question was, is Sabrina involved in the murder or the cover-up, and the answer is no! She got into that shower room and she took pictures, in her words, to show that the military is nothing but lies.
Another thing that you don't know from the movie, but you do know perhaps from the New Yorker or the book... Sabrina's father was a cop, her brother is a cop, she wanted to become a cop, and a forensic photographer. She joined the military so that she would have enough money to go to school. After taking the picture of the thumbs up, she went on to take over 20 detailed photographs of the body which can only be described as forensic pictures, pictures basically providing evidence of a crime. Here's where the outraged citizen comes in: the CIA interrogator who i believe killed al-Jamadi--we know his name! He has never never never been brought up on charges. Sabrina Harman spent a year in prison. I'm always a little baffled when people say they don't express remorse. They're angry! They're angry! The people who they know knew everything about this and were involved with this have never been held accountable, and it goes all the way to the top! It's wrong! It's deeply, deeply, deeply wrong. We looked at the photographs, we thought we knew everything there was to know about Abu Ghraib, we thought we understood everything that we needed to understand about Abu Ghraib. We understood little or nothing. Photographs reveal and conceal, they serve as an expose and as a cover-up. We saw a glimpse of Abu Ghraib and it stopped us dead in our tracks because we thought we had someone to blame."
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