Errol Morris is a “documentary filmmaker” only in that no other succinct label describes his work — most often artful renderings, reenactments, re-visitations, and character studies of true events. Now Morris brings us Standard Operating Procedure, a collaborative film/book project with the writer Philip Gourevitch revealing the stories of the American soldiers who were on both sides of the lens of the haunting, iconic photographs from Abu Ghraib prison. Sorry to report, no tickets remain to hear Morris introduce and discuss the film in an April 15 screening at the Walker.
Even without a ticket, you’re only a click away from seeing how Morris’ mind works. In long, captivating blogs for the New York Times, Morris has taken to disseminating and dissecting the topic of photographic truth like a forensic scientist — he’s essentially asking “What is and isn’t documentary?” His latest, published today, digs into his own landmark film, The Thin Blue Line.
In the essay, Morris explains one seemingly small but important creative choice he made in that film — to reenact the spilling of a milkshake at the scene of a police officer’s shooting: “We assemble our picture of reality from details. We don't take in reality whole. Our ideas about reality come from bits and pieces of experience. We try to assemble them into something that has a consistent narrative.”
The 2005 Women with Vision film festival at Walker opened last May with Susanne Bier’s film Brothers. This past Sunday the nominations for the 2005 European Film Awards were announced Sunday at the Seville Film Festival. The prizes will be presented on December 3rd in Berlin. Leading the list with seven nominations is Michael Haneke’s Cache, followed closely by Susanne Bier’s Brothers . Both movies are nominated for best European Film this year, along with Wim Wenders’ Don’t Come Knocking, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne’s L’Enfant, Pawel Pawlikowski’s My Summer of Love, and Marc Rothemund’s Sophie Scholl - The Final Days.
“If terrorists have seized control of the world narrative, if they have captured the historical imagination, have they become, in effect, the world’s new novelists?” The New York Times‘ Lorrie Moore wrote this in 1991, but, with suicide bombings happening with alarming frequency–nearly daily in Iraq or the Middle East–and, in the cases of Egypt and London, in places rarely rocked by such explosions, her question is timely. It’s a notion culled from the Don DeLillo novel she was reviewing, Mao II, which has its protagonist musing:
There’s a curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists. In the West we become famous effigies as our books lose the power to shape and influence…. Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness. What writers used to do before we were all incorporated.
While many people now are pondering what makes suicide bombers tick, from Time reporter Aparisim Ghosh’s rare glimpse into the mind of a bomber-to-be in Iraq (his pseudonym, Abu Ubeida al-Jarrah, uses the name of a 7th-century general who overthrew Syria for Islam) to Hany Abu-Assad’s film Paradise Now, which will screen at the Walker in October (details to come)–others are wondering how these tactics are rewriting our narratives. Douglas Rushkoff, author of Coercion and Media Virus, blogs:
Suicide bombing is a media virus with very real effects. The sticky outer shell is the event itself - a suicide bombing gets covered on the news. It’s huge news, especially if it occurs in a white western nation. Currently, it’s the fastest spreading kind of news story there is.
The code, like that of any successful media virus, challenges the unarticulated confusion over the relationship of the west to oil, Arabs, Islam, and post-colonialism. Actually, the virus fuels itself on rage going back as far as the Crusades, or certainly since the imposition of CIA-sponsored dictatorships.”
And Harper’s editor and author of the new book Mediated, Thomas de Zengotita, wonders aloud:
I’ve been thinking and writing about performative self-consciousness in a mediated age for the last five years or so, and I have this question which I’ve scarcely dared to formulate so unlikely does it seem. I’m wondering if “playing a starring role” could be part of the motive for suicide bombers, not the whole motive, obviously, but part? At first I recoil from the thought--nobody needs attention that much! But then I remember Columbine and I remember the video record of themselves that the shooters compiled--I saw some of those tapes, and this is my native culture, and I’ve taught High School, and I know those kids were starring in their own show. So I’m asking…is there anything like a culture of performance at work in the worlds of suicide bombers?
Discuss.
“Spectacular!” I’m always wary of the one-word blurb on film ads, suspecting that the real context presents a different reality: “It’s a spectacular mystery how this abysmal attempt at filmmaking ever got made.” Gelf Magazine confirms the suspicion, comparing film blurbs with the original reviews they came from. A few examples:
Los Angeles Times review of Be Cool:
“…Travolta is as smooth as ever…”
Actual line:
“[Travolta’s character Chili] Palmer is back in Be Cool, and although Travolta is as smooth as ever, the picture is a bust, a grimly unfunny comedy with no connection to reality, and worst of all, running on and on for two dismal hours.”
Daily Star review of 16 Years of Alcohol:
“Trainspotting meets A Clockwork Orange!”
Actual line:
“This glum, violent drama about a Scottish thug ruined by drink is written and pretentiously directed by Richard Jobson whose approach--Trainspotting meets A Clockwork Orange--is bad enough to drive you to drink in no time.“
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