February 14, 2008...9:43 am
Berlinale: Standard Operating Procedure
The first of two films I have seen in the last 48 hours at the Berlinale, ‘Standard Operating Procedure’ is a documentary by Errol Morris about the Abu Ghraib scandal of 2003, when images of mistreatment and abuse of prisoners in Iraq were broadcast around the world. The film tells the story of the affair, mainly through interviews with the soldiers and others who were working at the prison, dramatic reconstructions, and of course the photographs themselves. The interviewees include the likes of Lynddie England, the woman soldier who featured in many of the photographs, and what I found disturbing about the film was the level of denial England and some of the others seemed to have about the affair.
Morris does not seem to push them too far, indeed he seems to be basically handing them the rope they need and then lets them get on with it. A couple of the interviewees come out with a tiny portion of credit, but in the end the film for them seems to be an exercise in “it’s not my fault!”, as they grope wildly for justifications and explanations for the abuses they took part in.
I do have a couple of problems with the film. Firstly, the use of dramatic reconstructions of some of the events described in the interviews was completely unnecessary. They did not add to the film, and even, in the case of one shaky handheld video that was actually genuine, sometimes caused a blur between what was real and what was imagined. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the film only covered the story of the soldiers and the other Americans in the prison. Although we saw image after disturbing image of the Iraqi prisoners, we did not hear their side of the story, nor indeed did we even find out any of their names. We heard the nicknames that they were given by the soldiers, but we did not learn anything about any of them…and for me this left me feeling a little uneasy. In the main I just found it an odd technique to tell the story of an abuse, without getting the perspective and experience of the abused.
In general I would say that the film is both well made and important, especially through the role it plays in exposing the level of cover-up within the armed forces that meant that no-one higher than the rank of Sergent faced charges for what happened in Abu Ghraib. I just wish that the film had taken the time to get the perspective of the “others” in the story, who remain as anonymous after seeing at as they do in the photographs themselves.
More reviews and info:
Standard Operating Procedure at the IMDb.
Guardian review by Peter Bradshaw.
More on the Berlinale in general at the Spiegel Online.
On the Atari DJ Tapedeck: ‘American Land’, Bruce Springsteen.
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