Well, it gets my vote. While the film biz is busy with its annual gold-plated hand job telethon, Errol Morris has quietly submitted what may be the most important film of 2008.
I just watched it for the second time and was pretty much devastated.
I’ve been watching this filmmaker since his 1978 Gates of Heaven, a pretty okay documentary about pet cemeteries and the people who take them seriously.
Morris has been making outlier docs for 30 years now and has recently taken to paying his subjects as a way to get them to participate. This is a stroke of genius.
As usual, he is 15 years ahead of his time. It must suck to be ahead of your time. It must be lonely.
Your peers think you’re crazy and the people who get you think you’re dead.
Poor Errol. I can’t wait to see what he does next.
I don’t know that I could watch this movie, Scout. It sounds… agonizing. One of the darkest moments in the nation’s history played out in such a fashion. I’d hate to feel so ashamed.
I’ve gotta admit I’ve never seen an Errol Morris film, despite four thrill-filled years in film school. Perhaps it would be good for me to endure this despite the hardship.
I’m not very squeamish and this movie didn’t take me to squeamish. It was astounding to watch those kids we all saw in the famous photos, like the girl holding the leash with the naked man on all fours….to see her years later, older, wiser, contrite and bitter at how she had been manipulated by the higher ups. Used and thrown away. These were naive country kids for the most part who had no clue what they were doing. NOT A CLUE. So I don’t think it would be agonizing to watch. More stupefying. The banality of evil is more like it. You can’t quite believe what you are hearing and seeing.
Some of the prisoners related some hair raising stories…guys picked up for no reason at all…normal working joes dragged into this hell courtesy of the US government.
I screened it a second time for some friends who had seen the previews and didn’t believe that this was a documentary tracing the plot of a true story.
Even now it’s hard to believe. They should level that place and salt the ground where it stood.
“The banality of evil.” Great line. It puts me in mind of HBO’s original movie Conspiracy – the one about the secret Nazi meeting where they came up with the Final Solution. People who haven’t seen it should; the cold aloofness of the people around the table is appalling. Kenneth Branagh and Colin Firth, if I recall correctly.
Okay, you’ve sold me, Scout. Onto my Netflix list it goes. But it’s on you if it reduces me to a whimpering husk.