S.O.P.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are very difficult because I have to work first thing and cannot blog. Just got home from seeing Errol Morris’s Standard Operating Procedure. Pretty damned chilling. Although I found the piece I read about it even more compelling. Seeing the people interviewed was interesting – especially with Morris’s method of straight on camera work. It was a little long and the chronological structure was unexpectedly and irritatingly confusing. It was called Standard Operating Procedure but it really wasn’t about that at all, it was about the pictures. The pictures from Abu Ghraib. It never looks straight at the question of what they were doing, who told them to do it, and what in the world they were thinking taking the photos. And the Danny Elfman soundtrack is only mildly annoying in a Philip Glass sort of way. It is a powerful and gripping film about a subject that, unfortunately, as with far too many things that have arisen during this administration, is unresolved.