Well, I've had a day off from the film festival as I could tell my body was shutting itself down against my will two nights ago.
The press party beckoned as did another Caves bound Mirrorball party and the promise of some breakdancing in the Delegate Centre courtesy of the fabulous local dance troupe Random Aspekts. But a more reasonable higher intelligence wagged its finger at me and said, no - go to bed with a hot cocoa and watch Dr Who.
So I did and passed out for 27 hours. And I needed the sleep for I had to digest the Errol Morris: In Person talk from the day before and prepare myself to sit through his latest hard hitting work.
Morris, as many of you will know, is one of today's foremost and most influential documentary filmmakers, best known for his expose on police corruption in The Thin Blue Line and his more recent interview with Robert MacNamara, the notorious US Secretary of Defence, whose guilt and involvement in the creation and running of the Vietnam war was the subject of Morris's Oscar-winning feature The Fog of War.
His latest opus, his eight feature documentary takes a swipe at a more contemporary battle arena in Standard Operating Procedure and investigates the now infamous goings on at Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.
It's already a controversial film before its release with accusations of 'glamourising' the horror by presenting the facts, interviews and reconstructions with high production values - computer graphics and virtuoso cinematic panache accompanied by a thumping rousing score from veteran compser Danny Elfman, better known for the soundtracks to many of Tim Burton's gothic fantasies. It's possible the big screen cinematic values of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 have proved an influence here in some way. He has also been accused of failing to include some of the more senior government and military officials in his document of the gross misconduct and abuse of fellow human beings by focusing exclusively on the seemingly 'young', 'naive' and 'misguided' military personnel and regular army soldiers who took the rap when the story broke.
Standard Operating Procedure is uncomfortable viewing and towards the end I started to wonder if I could take any more and I felt profoundly angry and upset not only at the evidence and justifications for what was I was seeing, but at the sheer pointlessness of it all, a fact reiterated by every partcipant at the end - no useful information was ever extracted from any methods of interrogation.
Most of the perpetrators of the 'general abuse', torture and murders that took place there, whilst displaying minimal regret and a lack of awareness of wrong-doing, justify their actions through youthful inexperience, following orders through fear of being court martialled or simply becoming immune to it through a form of institutionalisation. If anything good comes from this film it's the evidence that being trained to fight and operate in a war de-humanises ordinary people to the point where they can no longer make rational or moral judgements nor respond accordingly.
This is the only angle which allows any sympathy for the participants for their lack of remorse or inablity to express profound regret for their actions continually removes it from the audience. We are always forced to question their real feelings and intentions behind their actions and their justifications or lack thereof.
The film is structured in a linear, timeline fashion with the interviewees various arrivals at Abu Ghraib and presents a day by day breakdown of where and when the various events and pictures were taken.
Some scenes are reconstructed with unexpected visual beauty and style - we see the drops of water from a shower head cascade in slow motion in shimmering silver light toward the camera to uplifting music as we learn of waterboarding techniques. We see vicious dogs bark in slow motion in front of the lens, saliva and rage dripping from their jaws as if they weant to attack us the viewer. Various sets recreate the operations rooms, corridors and cells of the prison complex and we see various people and actions superimposed on these as if ghosts from a dark past.
Half the film is talking heads through Morris' famous 'Interrotron', a device that allows the interviewee to speak and look directly into the camera lens whilst seeing a picture of Morris himself look back at them as he asks questions. It allows a degree on intimacy and encourages openness with the interviewer and the audience.
I disagree with the critics - I think Morris' 'slicking up' of a near unwatchable barrage of information is perhaps the only way that an audience could cope with it. If it had been more like a conventional documentary with gritty, grainy footage, handheld camerawork and a series of disgusting still photographs of the abuse (of which there are hundreds) I really dont think I would have lasted more than an hour.
But it's a film that needs to be seen urgently by as many people as possible. It's not a barrel of laughs, but I recommend it highly for anyone interested in gleaning insights into the way human beings respond and behave when a set of particular conditions are in place. It makes one wonder at the sheer complexity of why one small thing leads to something much worse and leaves us scratching our heads about all the information we didn't get to see but was hinted at - the 'real tortures'. Incidentally, Standard Operating Procedure in the context of this film refers to which kind and levels of abuse are deemd acceptable methods of preparing detainees for interrogation.
And so to the In Person EIFF talk. Morris is undoubtedly a brilliant filmmaker, but a crowd-pleasing energetic raconteur he is not. Perhaps he had jetlag, but he has a soporific hypnotic drawl, speaks slowly, very slowly and thoughtfully and most of the row I sat in had trouble keeping their eyes open despite the fact that what he was saying was fascinating.
Here the cameras were turned on him to document the interview and he had his own face projected onto a 100 foot screen so those further back in the cinema could get a good view. He seemed to be aware of this and true to his own technique, now turned on him he kept looking into the lens so as to be looking directly at us. He first told us that he doesnt think there's a difference between being interrogated and being interviewed. When asked 'why this?' in reference to the latest subject matter, he responded, only half joking that he had always 'wanted to make a movie that made people wish they'd never been born'. Well thankfully he hasnt succeeded entirely but if he keeps trying......
A former private investigator, his knack for digging up and extracting information from people has now found creative use as a filmmaker. Asked 'How many people have you broken' in reference to onscreen confessions, he stated he 'wasn't really interested in the confession per se but more interested in revealing the nature of the person being interviewed'. He likes moral ambiguity to the point where he seemed unpersuaded by his own thoughts and beliefs at time and along these lines added 'if people that (the subjects of his films) are like us...then what does that say about us? What does that mean?'. 'I'm interested', he went on, 'in getting people to engage in a dialogue with themselves'.
He warmed up as the event went on and eventually told a hilarious anecdote about being asked to interview First Lady Laura Bush for The Fog of War before discovering the White House would be providing him not only with the 5 questions he would be asking her but also the 5 official already prepared answers she would be giving. Reluctantly participating in this fraud, one of the questions on the list was 'What's your favourite movie?' On the answer sheet was written 'The Wizard of Oz'. However when interviewed she replied that her favourite movie was the James Dean epic Giant. She had been an extra in that movie (well now it's tainted isn't it) and said of the story 'Gee those people were so poor till their oil well came through.' That interview didnt feature in the film. Go figure.
He also revealed an accident that MacNamara had in Morris' home when he fell against a stool injuring himeslf so badly he required an ambulance. Morris thought to himself 'if i've unwittingly killed MacNamara, I'm going to be regarded as a hero by half the world.' MacNamara survived of course and they are still 'friendly'.
That's enough writing for one day. Some of the images in Standard Operating Procedure are still hard-wired into my brain and I need a beer, a cigarette and a cute Disney film (can't wait for Wall-E to be honest) to get realigned into a more harmonious frame of mind.
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