Director Errol Morris searches for truths of Abu Ghraib — his way

With such acclaimed films as "The Thin Blue Line," "A Brief History of Time" and "The Fog of War," Errol Morris has established a unique voice in nonfiction film, combining the razor-sharp instincts of an investigative reporter and the groundbreaking style of a cinematic innovator. Boyishly exuberant at age 60, Morris recently visited Seattle to discuss his latest film, "Standard Operating Procedure," a compelling investigation into the truth behind the notorious Abu Ghraib prison photographs. It opens today at Harvard Exit.

Q: You focus on the context of the Abu Ghraib photos, and how they simultaneously expose and conceal the truth. But the subject matter guarantees that you'll be criticized for political bias.

A: I would like the film to transcend politics, but whether that's possible is another matter altogether. I think it may not be possible.

Q: You've also been criticized for asserting your own conspicuous style. Why do you think people assign more credibility to the no-frills cinema vérité style of documentary filmmaking?

A: It's a very powerful and attractive idea that there's a set of rules you can follow to guarantee truthfulness: You use available light and a hand-held camera, you eschew re-enacted material and you obey certain kinds of conventions. But style doesn't guarantee the truthfulness of anything. That's like saying that writing a sentence in one particular font would make it more truthful. We want the appearance of truth. We don't want the feeling that we're at sea, even though we are constantly at sea, especially in the case of Abu Ghraib.

Q: After one viewing of your film, I still felt a nagging ambivalence about some of the Americans in the photographs, like [military police specialist] Sabrina Harman, smiling thumbs-up next to the corpse of an Iraqi prisoner. After a second viewing, her determination to take and expose the photos struck me as strangely heroic.

A: A lot of people have mentioned this second-viewing phenomenon, and I think it's because (a) there's so much information to process and (b) it goes against our received views in such a radical way. Everyone has a preconceived notion of Abu Ghraib. They think they know the story and there's no need to revisit it. I'm forcing us to look again at these people, and to consider them as people, not monsters. I'm challenging certain assumptions about the photographs. I'm saying that Abu Ghraib was much bigger than we can ever imagine from the photographs, and most people don't want to think about the reality of 10,000 prisoners in a space designed for a fraction of that number, or endless violations — not just of the Geneva Conventions but of human decency.

Q: The American MPs aren't innocent, they're just not as guilty as we may have assumed.

A: They're not lily-white, but they're so far from being the monsters that they've been portrayed as in the press. If it wasn't for Sabrina, we would never have known about the murder of [Iraqi prisoner] Manadel al-Jamadi by a CIA interrogator who has been identified yet remains unpunished.

Q: When a man's been tortured to death, it's hard to see the justice in punishing a soldier for taking some pictures, regardless of how ill-advised their actions were.

A: At some point you have to ask, do we really care about torture? We can get locked into endless debates about whether torture is justified ... but don't people feel a sense of shame at letting the bad guys walk away and hitting someone like Sabrina Harman with a prison sentence for exactly ... what? Taking photographs of a crime? Threatening to expose that crime? Refusing to participate in a cover-up? Properly considered, taking those photographs was an act of civil disobedience.

Q: Without stating it outright, the film clearly suggests that the Bush administration was aware of what was happening at Abu Ghraib before the photos got out.

A: In point of fact, I don't believe the administration was ignorant. There was constant communication between the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center, which was the center of intelligence operations at Abu Ghraib, and the highest echelons of the Defense Department. In other words, people who report to the White House.

Q: Once again, some critics are sniping at your use of stylized re-enactments.

A: I've been using re-enactments since I started making movies. "Re-enactment" is a bad choice of words. I'm visually inspired by lines extracted from interviews, like [Abu Ghraib day-shift guard] Tony Diaz talking about the drop of prisoner's blood that fell on his uniform. I'm a filmmaker, and that kind of detail inspires me. Am I concerned with issues of style, of what my movies look like? Yes! I'm not ashamed to say it!

Q: It's been suggested that you should add a disclaimer to the film, stating that some of the interviewees were paid for their participation.

A: We all want assurances that we're being given the truth, but think of all the disclaimers we'd have to add if we went down that slippery slope. To me, the underlying issue is, am I seeking the truth to the best of my abilities? Am I really trying to uncover what really happened? Do I fact-check, and question what people say to me? Sure, my feet should be held to the fire, and critics are free to attack me any way they see fit. I suppose I'd prefer not to pay for interviews, but when I heard that [Abu Ghraib MP private] Lynndie England was living at a level of poverty that I can't even imagine, well, that's when the issue of reasonable payment [for an interview] becomes, to my way of thinking, entirely acceptable.

Jeff Shannon: j.sh@verizon.net