THE Errol Morris documen tary on Abu Ghraib is here. That’s fair enough: Why shouldn’t there be torture porn for readers of The Nation?
Only thing is, those hoping to see Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz – if not President Bush – get a cinematic racking in “Standard Operating Procedure” are going to be disappointed.
Morris doesn’t find anyone of any rank behind the abuses documented in the infamous photos.
Morris interviewed most of the soldiers linked to the photos of prisoners, many of them stripped nude and forced to take up sexually humiliating positions. But the supposed Pieta of the images – the hooded man standing on a box with wires wrapped around his fingertips who was told he’d be electrocuted if he left the box – becomes less appalling when you learn all of the facts.
According to Spc. Sabrina Harman, who is portrayed by Morris as a conscience-stricken truth-teller, even if she admits her complicity in the crimes, the prisoner, nicknamed “Gilligan,” was made to stand on the box for only 10 or 15 minutes, laughed off the electrocution threat, and later became friendly with Harman and other captors.
Harman and fellow soldier Lynndie England get a lot of screen time to explain their habit of smiling and flashing the thumbs-up when the pictures were taken. But given a chance to explain, both come across as anything but frivolous. Moreover, Morris’ pose of white-hot indignation, for lesser offenses as well as serious ones, often strays into overreaction.
England points out that in the photo of her with the leashed prisoner, she wasn’t dragging the man (and probably couldn’t have, given her tiny size). England embarrassed the Army, but there’s a difference between frat-boy degradation and actual torture.
Morris’ principles clash. He doesn’t want to blame working-class soldiers, several of them women (and one of them gay), yet they admit doing the shameful things they’re accused of. They often refer to unidentified superiors who supposedly knew what was going on at Abu Ghraib, or even set the standard for maltreatment.
Gen. Janis Karpinski, who was relieved of command in the wake of the scandal, insists here that she did neither. It’s easy to imagine a different documentary casting her as the villain, but Karpinski’s gender makes it hard for Morris to find fault with her. If you are going to point the finger, you need to come up with a name, and Morris’ subjects don’t.
So Morris fills in the gaps with lots of strange special effects; pictures are shown being zapped around the cosmos as though we’re about to be given an update on the rebel alliance’s work on Hoth. There are many cheesy “America’s Most Wanted”-style re-enactments of the events going on before and after the photos were taken, and trivial detective work revealing, for instance, that this or that soldier was just outside the frame.
By the end, we wind up pretty much where we were four years ago when the pictures first appeared in the papers: Inexperienced troops did disgusting things, but it’s a mystery who else knew.
STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE
Same photos in new frames.
Running time: 116 minutes. Rated R (disturbing images, nudity, profanity). At the Lincoln Plaza and the Angelika.