A fascinating look behind the photos of Abu Ghraib in "Standard Operating Procedure,"

"Photographs are what they are. You can interpret them differently, but what the photograph depicts is what it is. You can put any kind of meaning to it, but you are seeing what happened at that snapshot in time."

In Errol Morris' extraordinary non-fiction film "Standard Operating Procedure," these observations are made by Brent Pack, the former special agent for the Criminal Investigations Division assigned to analyze more than a thousand photos taken by American military police at Abu Ghraib prison, including notorious images of torture and abuse that shamed America and sent seven "bad apples" (as the MPs were called by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld) to prison while their superiors avoided prosecution.

One of those convicted MPs was Javal Davis, an articulate sergeant who served as a night-shift guard at Abu Ghraib. He has an equally valid take on those incriminating photos: "Pictures only show you a fraction of a second. You don't see forward and you don't see backward. You don't see outside the frame."

Morris embraces Davis' remarks as a mission statement, investigating the Abu Ghraib photos with surgical precision. Do they confirm what we thought we were seeing? Were the "bad apples" all bad? What must we know that the photos don't tell us?

Using the dispassionately interrogative methods established in previous films (including his Oscar-winning "The Fog of War"), Morris interviews five of the convicted MPs (two remain in prison, unavailable for interview), including former Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski (commander of the MPs at Abu Ghraib) and Lynndie England, the pixieish private who posed smiling with abused Iraqi prisoners in several of the most incriminating photos, thus becoming Abu Ghraib's most notorious symbol of American shame.

Some interviewees were paid for their testimony, but it's clear they're speaking freely and without manipulation. They come across as disillusioned victims, grateful for the opportunity to "look beyond the frame" or, in Karpinski's case, to rail against the high-ranking officials who cast them as scapegoats.

Using the photos, a compelling graphical timeline and stylized re-enactments of Abu Ghraib events that play like a true-life horror film, Morris explores the reality of Abu Ghraib with a visceral intensity that straightforward reportage could never allow. His visuals could be criticized as being redundant exclamation points drenched in the grimy aesthetic of the "Saw" franchise. But the re-enactments function as powerful, impressionistic reflections of the madness that was taking place at Abu Ghraib. Aided by Danny Elfman's somber, elegiac score, Morris' arresting images enhance his quest for truth, rather than detract from it.

That truth, according to "Standard Operating Procedure": torture and death occurred at Abu Ghraib before the "bad apples" arrived; as Karpinski says, "the pattern was already set."

As Pack observes, some abuses evident in the photos qualified as torture while others were dismissed as "standard operating procedure." The most nightmarish truth in Morris' film is the fact that those kinds of distinctions are made in the first place. We can only wonder what happens when cameras aren't allowed.

Jeff Shannon: j.sh@verizon.net