Standard Operating Procedure

Plot synopsis:
Is it possible for a photograph to change the world? Photographs taken by soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison changed the war in Iraq and changed Americas image of itself. Yet, a central mystery remains. Did the notorious Abu Ghraib photographs constitute evidence of systematic abuse by the American military, or were they documenting the aberrant behavior of a few bad apples?
We set out to examine the context of these photographs. Why were they taken? What was happening outside the frame? We talked directly to the soldiers who took the photographs and who were in the photographs. Who are these people? What were they thinking? Over two years of investigation, we amassed a million and a half words of interview transcript, thousands of pages of unredacted reports, and hundreds of photographs. The story of Abu Ghraib is still shrouded in moral ambiguity, but it is clear what happened there.
The Abu Ghraib photographs serve as both an expose and a coverup. An expose, because the photographs offer us a glimpse of the horror of Abu Ghraib; and a coverup because they convinced journalists and readers they had seen everything, that there was no need to look further. In recent news reports, we have learned about the destruction of the Abu Zubaydah interrogation tapes. A coverup. It has been front page news. But the coverup at Abu Ghraib involved thousands of prisoners and hundreds of soldiers. We are still learning about the extent of it.
Many journalists have asked about the smoking gun of Abu Ghraib. It is the wrong question. As Philip Gourevitch has commented, Abu Ghraib is the smoking gun. The underlying question that we still have not resolved, four years after the scandal: how could American values become so compromised that Abu Ghraiband the subsequent coverupcould happen?

Tags: sadist, psychedelic, violence

Review:
It was a good decision to look at the events at Abu Gharib mainly through the eyes of the convicted military officers; and of course the photographs speak for themselves.
Although the documentary does point out and emphasize that high-ranking officers were never imprisoned for the depicted crimes, in my opinion, the film does fail to ask many essential questions that I feel should have been included in this documentary.
What kind of a system is this that can categorize a completely naked "detainee" handcuffed backwards to his bed or another prisoner made to stand for a long time in a difficult position by the fear of being electrocuted as "standard operating procedure"?
I am aware that the answers to these questions would stretch the format the director has chosen for this documentary, but I still believe that Errol Morris should have looked more openly into these territories in order to have made an even bolder film; and bold, courageous and very well made this film certainly is..
Errol Morris' documentary Standard Operating Procedure attempts to examine the atmosphere surrounding the abuse, the people involved, and whether it was all down to a few "bad apples", or if it was reflective of the American military as a whole.Morris keeps his authorial influence to a minimum, instead allowing his subjects to speak for themselves.
She and the other soldiers interviewed describe, with remarkable candour, what it was like living in Abu Ghraib prison, their relationships with each other and the prisoners, and the events and tensions surrounding those incidents depicted in the photographs.
It all paints a picture of the prison as a dark and stifling environment, one just waiting to bring out the worst in people.The real centrepiece of the film, though, are the photographs.
It is not that this is new or surprising, but that it needs to be seen and remembered as much as the Holocaust.That is not to say the murder of six million Jews stands equal to the abuses by our soldiers in Iraq, but that we need to remember this and make sure that we do everything we can to prevent it from happening again.The professionals will tell you that there is no useful information that can be obtained from tortured prisoners.
Errol Morris has covered some interesting and weird subjects and I found his last film (Fog of War) to be quite fascinating, so I was looking forward to seeing where he went next.
When I learnt that the film would be a tight focus on Abu Ghraib I hoped that Morris would explore the total human aspect of it and do a really good job of delivering this part of it.Unfortunately what Morris manages to produce is a film that is solid but not as remarkable as the subject deserves.
Taxi to the Dark Side comes to mind specifically because it uses the prison as its starting point before following the smell upwards and outwards to paint a much bigger picture of failure and things that are impacting beyond specific acts of torture.
This was a gamble in a way because the problem with the aftermath of Abu Ghraib was that it was only the "little people" that got the spotlight and nobody else and, by focusing on them, Morris needed to get a lot from them or else his film would end up the same way.He does this to a point as they discuss in detail what they did and what they saw and it does still have the power to shock and depress.
While "Taxi to the Dark Side" moved up the chain of command, Morris needed to move into his interviewees' soul  something he doesn't manage to do.The second failing of the film is the overuse of "recreated" scenes and asides.
It was unnecessary and distracted from what as real and powerful enough.The film still works as a good summary of events within Abu Ghraib but it is hard to get excited about it since so much of it feels familiar.
The well-known documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, who received an Oscar for his 2003 study of Robert McNamara and Vietnam 'The Fog of War,' has put the Abu Ghraib scandal under a microscope, but the result is too limited a picture of events.Morris' film describes and shows the humiliations, the nude prisoners cuffed in stress positions or forced to masturbate or pile on top of each other with bags or women's underpants on their heads; the man they called "Gilligan" in the fringed blanket with the conical hat standing on a box with fake electrical wiring to his fingers; the howling dogs terrifying a squatting naked man and biting another's leg; the corpse of a man beaten to death packed in bags of ice.The images, both stills and some fragments of videotapes, have a dramatic and quickly sickening effect.
But the result is disappointingly narrow and obsessive, because Morris has allowed the low-ranking Americans implicated by the pictures, the majority of them concerned only with their own fates and future, to be the dominant voices of the film.
The exceptions are a crude but more experienced interrogator, a precise but morally numb military investigator, and the angry general Janis Karpinski who was scapegoated because she was commander of the MPs.Rory Kennedy's 'The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,' produced for HBO last year, has already presented all this information about the photo scandal--together with the larger context Morris has left out.
Alex Gibney's 'Taxi to the Dark Side' thoroughly explored the larger implications--the responsibilities that go all the way up, the distribution of prison abuses throughout Afghanistan, Iran and Guantánamo, the violations of international law and the inadequacy of torture as an interrogation device.
Anyone coming to Morris' film from Kennedy's and Gibney's will find it incomplete.'Standard Operating Procedure' doesn't follow up on any Iraqis.
He introduces fake basement-tape video reenactments (a device he has used before) to augment the visuals of the Abu Ghraib abuses--close-ups of "prisoners'" bodies, blood dripping on a uniform, keys going into a lock--so that after a while you aren't sure what is real and what is fake.
Apart for one or two shaky expressions of doubt, awareness that all this wasn't right, especially on the part of Sabrina Harmon, writing to her "wife" Katie back home, they tend to speak as people going about what they believed to be their jobs; doing what others did and what everybody knew was being done at Abu Ghraib.
There's not much effort to question or puncture any of this testimony.The film's title refers to the army investigator's conclusion that the majority of the photographed humiliations and punishments were "Standard Operating Procedure" and only certain scenes of physical injury could be classified as documenting crimes.
The distinction between torture and humiliation Morris alludes to seems less important than how the whole pattern of sordid conduct at the prisons get started, a topic 'Standard Operating Procedure' doesn't investigate.
Although I was not engaged as I was with Morris's other works, Standard Operating Procedure is still a brilliant and fascinating look at the Abu Ghraib photo scandal.Morris interviews through the interrotron numerous members of the staff at Abu Ghraib prison.
If people knew what was really going on at the top, they would most surely revolt, or at the very least make a stink, and that would be it for you.Morris interviews one person who claims she took pictures because she knew it was wrong, to show the world.
Standard Operating Procedure is the film no one is talking about.Errol Morris' documentary on the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison is smart and informative.
While talking head interviews with the people directly and indirectly involved provide the backbone, cinematic reconstructions of 2003s grizzly events coupled with the well known photographs taken by soldiers work successfully at pulling an emotional response from the viewer.Though intriguing, SOP doesn't really benefit from the big screen treatment and would probably have just as much impact if viewed on TV.Dark and depressing, shocking and enlightening: SOP is 2008's must see documentary..
Yet this same military directed its lowest ranking personnel to commit the grossest criminal acts and when the whole thing was uncovered refused to take responsibility, instead opting to scapegoat those who were stuck with having to carry out the orders.
We're all familiar with the images that began flowing out of Abu Ghraib Prison in the spring of 2004 - photos showing detainees (some terrorists, others undoubtedly not) hooded and stripped, forced to assume painful and/or humiliating positions, often for hours on end, with American soldiers posing gleefully nearby, smiling and flashing thumbs-up signs for the camera.
Once the pictures went viral, they came to symbolize not only the botched operation that was the Iraq war, but the fundamental failure of the U.S. military to win friends and influence people in a land the Bush administration claimed vehemently to be "liberating." In "Standard Operating Procedure," famed documentary filmmaker Errol Morris ("The Thin Blue Line") attempts to uncover the truth behind those photographs, mainly by allowing those who were most closely involved with the scandal to tell the story in their own words (including Private First Class Lynndie England, who, whether fairly or unfairly, emerged as the one clearly identifiable "face" and household name from the scandal).
Morris also makes it clear that these low level individuals - many of whom have served time in prison for their crimes - were most certainly used as scapegoats for higher-ups in the military who managed to successfully deflect any personal culpability for the events that took place there.In a true journalistic coup, Morris was able to obtain grainy home movies shot at the same time that the pictures were being taken.
As a result, we're able to witness the step-by-step process by which that infamous shot of the naked men stacked in a pyramid formation ultimately came about."Standard Operating Procedure" doesn't successfully address all the questions it sets out to answer, but that is hardly a weakness of the film, since it is dealing with a complex, messy situation involving complex, messy people caught up in a complex, messy war.
Errol Morris's Standard Operating Procedure, however, is not his Fog of War. In the latter, the images and testimonies make their case without much help.
In the former, re-enactments, arty images, and sublimating music mitigate the honesty of soldiers testifying in front of the camera about their stupidity and a system that made them torture at the infamous Abu Ghraib.The images of Lynndie England with her thumb up over a detainee's genitals are not new to anyone alert to the Iraq War. The additional images Morris adds do little to further help us understand the motivations of Americans who abused prisoners 4 years ago.
When images change from historical black and white to modern color, the irony of blissful forgetfulness is more powerful than any re-enactment or manipulative music.Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side (2008) may do a better job showing the purpose of Cheney and Rumsfeld to keep soldiers unprepared for their responsibilities, but Morris has succeeded in providing further original images that tell the truth we should never forget..
As is obvious in the complex responses to both the book and the film by Errol Morris and Philip Gourevitch, STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE places in our faces some facts we would rather shield than discuss.
The story of the period of between September 2003 and February 2004 at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is so well known not only from the news media but also from the Internet blogging sites that it need not be outlined in a review of this film.
But there it is and yes, we do need to witness the abuse and humiliation that describes the US prisoner treatment in Iraq, no matter who is to blame - enlisted personnel, MI, high ranking military officials, the White House.
The flow of the documentary with the interplay of interview pieces by those infamous young people upon whose shoulders the blame was placed in what appears to be a diversionary technique to avoid deeper probing of the true guilt, along with the images of the prison itself - stark lines of cellblocks and living conditions so foul they seem to actually smell on the screen - is well conceived and beautifully/creatively captured by cinematographers Robert Chappell and Robert Richardson and enhanced by a strangely appropriate musical scoring by Danny Elfman.
I don't think it's unfair to say that it is an important record concerning the events at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq during the American occupation.
I would not classify most documentaries as objective, and therefore, I don't mind the slanted view on the screen, but as far as film goes, the film maker did try to give the soldiers some opportunity to tell their story -- and their side of the story (that superiors were responsible for the policy) has some merit.I'm saddened that these events were committed by Americans.
First of all I personally gave it a 10/10 because the documentary was very moving and extremely insightful.Seeing these repulsive human beings TRYING to justify what they did is not only disturbing but begs to question what America's reel motivation is.Seeing these pathetic excuses coming out of such brainless people is seriously depressing.
I totally understand not to expect much out of brainless idiots who accept to go to war for NO REASON, but this goes far beyond stupidity, this is actual cruelty..This documentary does a great job of staying out of personal and emotional opinions or reactions, no judgements are made on these knuckle dragging soldiers, which does give everyone the chance to make up their own mind, which some would say is a good thing others like myself would totally disagree.
So following that logic I think the film makers should have voiced their disgust and shame towards these soldiers..All in all this is a very informative documentary that has much to show to the rest of the world.
Errol Morris's new documentary "Standard Operating Procedure" attempts to challenge the very medium of photography and bring to light the injustices at Abu Ghraib.
Documentaries are inherently subjective and set out to portray a certain angle; that being said what Director Errol Morris says are his intentions and what appears on the screen are two totally different things.
The interotron is a screen, similar to a TelePrompTer, that allows the interviewee to look directly into the camera, allowing for a more genuine first person feel to the film.However, for everything Errol Morris does right, there are a myriad of things done wrong here.
Morris attempts to spice up the picture by using grainy, melodramatic, slow motion sequences that serve little purpose other than to pad an already long film's running time and to flesh out images of his imagination in an attempt to sway the audience to his kind of thinking.
Errol Morris has stated on several occasions that "Standard Operating Procedure" is not a political film.
"Standard Operating Procedure" is a failed documentary in that it attempts to be investigative but is so subjective in it's material that it just comes off as a fumbling clump of information.
'Standard Operating Procedure' is a hard-hitting doc made by famed non-fiction American filmmaker Errol Morris.
His latest film covers events that occurred in 2003 in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, which saw American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners in a number of humiliating and torturous ways.Morris' authorial stamp is made very clear on the film from early on through the use of talking head interviews and reconstructed footage.
Other photographs include a dead Iraqi man in a body bag, a picture of a bloodied prisoner after being attacked by a dog and more.The photos not only exposed the whole scandal but they were hard evidence that it actually happened.
This is something that's often spoken about in the documentary with people saying that the photographs are an objective representation of what happened and everything you need to know is in the frame.
The big question, though, is why did these people take these incredibly condemning photographs of themselves?To be clear, this was a ridiculously stupid thing for the American soldiers to do – it's like a bank robber taking a picture of themselves robbing a bank.
It's further exacerbated by the fact that some of the prisoners weren't even terrorists, they were bakers or welders taken from their homes.The unethical acts committed by these people is the focal point of this film but I feel that Morris wants the headline to be that some of these things are actually permitted by the U.S. military.
I think that was the motivation for this documentary, based on the infamous photos taken in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.While the investigations into the back-story of the photos out of Abu Ghraib reveal valuable insights into the horrors of that place, it is seen that extrapolating a back-story from a picture can often be misleading.
But the documentary makes it quite clear that only low-level soldiers were ever sentenced while it was evident that their antics were known and passed over by higher level people.I think the film succeeds in its narrow focus of trying to understand how the photos came to be and who was involved in taking them.
The real culprits were the interrogators who were doing the tortures and those who were establishing the procedures, and those people were not filmed.
As was pointed out, if the Abu Ghraib photos had never come to light, nobody outside those involved would ever have known about this.
If Morris is to be believed, the tragedy of Abu Ghraib was that no valuable intelligence was extracted from any of the prisoners in this sorry affair.
Like the photos of the Abu Ghraib prisoners being abused, the pictures that form its central subject, the scope of the film is limited to an examination of how the pictures came to be, who participated in the acts, and who held the cameras.