Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.

I loved Capone’s interview with Errol Morris, and it makes me jealous. Like Capone, I was first turned on to Morris by the rantings and ravings of Siskel & Ebert, and I went out of my way to collect his work on video when I could. I love VERNON, FLORIDA and GATES OF HEAVEN dearly, and his later era of work is strong and provocative. He’s a giant in his field for good reason.

So how’s the new one? Just more Iraq polemic? Or does it actually have something new to contribute to the ongoing conversation about our engagement in that region?

Hey folks. Capone in Chicago here.

In the pantheon of great documentary filmmakers, Errol Morris is among the absolute best. I've never seen a film of his I didn't like, and most of his works I absolutely worship. His subjects vary greatly from film to film, and it's clear that he doesn't consider himself a "cause" director, but when he tackles a subject matter that is politically or socially charged, he does so with the passion and conviction of a man determined to reveal as much of the truth as he can. GATES OF HEAVEN and VERNON, FLORIDA are prime early works that examine the human condition, while other films (THE THIN BLUE LINE; MR. DEATH and his Oscar-winning THE FOG OF WAR) seem more intent on setting the record straight. His latest offering falls into the latter category, but rather than look at an event that took place years, sometimes decades earlier, Morris dares to look at recent history: the well-documented abuses that took place at the prison camp and interrogation center in Abu Ghraib, Iraq.

It is often believed that pictures don't lie, but Morris understands that "not lying" is not the same as telling the whole truth. Through a series of startlingly honest interviews with many of the lower-level American soldiers in those photographs, Morris paints as clear a picture of the torture, degradation and outright bizarre practices going on in the facility. Above all else, Standard Operating Procedure is a slap in the face to the news media, which had assumed that the photographs in question showed all there was to see and told the whole story. Did you know that the image of the hooded prisoner standing on a box with wires attached to his fingers documented a fraud? The wires weren't attached to anything, but the prisoner was made to believe they were. This fact doesn't erase the images of sexual humiliation and the cavalier posing by soldiers like Specialist Lynndie England with dead bodies, but it does reveal something that was never mentioned by any of the news organizations. England, who was made out to be some borderline mental defect by some media outlets, is interviewed extensively in SOP, and she is surprisingly articulate and straight-forward. Under other circumstances, she might even be considered sweet. My guess is that Morris gave her the first opportunity to really tell not just her side of the story, but the entire story.

In the bigger picture, SOP is about the little guy taking the fall for the fat cat—in this case, the U.S. military, the CIA and the Bush administration, whose position on these the treatment of terror suspects has never been more clear than in this film. Morris spares us nothing; we are taken on a detailed tour of every unblurred photo while England and the forensic expert who pieced together a timeline based on the photographic evidence talk about what we're seeing. Some supposed documented abuses are simply staged photos the soldiers took to look tough. Morris also shows us other collected images of the soldiers taking it easy and horsing around with each other, all in the name of painting the most complete picture and leaving little doubt that a cover-up began almost the second these photos were leaked. He never dares asks us to forgive these individuals for their part in these awful events; he simply wants us to aim our disgust and blame at the right people—all the right people. SOP drives its points home perhaps a little too hard and long (by about 15 minutes, I'd estimate), but maybe overkill is what is required here.

Capone