Framed

Standard Operating Procedure

Crit

This can be read as a sort of précis of the career of Errol Morris, who has been criticized for framing the facts to suit his purposes. In this examination of the abuses and the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, Morris spends little time telling us what we already know--that no commissioned officer has spent a second in jail for countenancing Abu G abuses, that those who were hung out to dry were almost exclusively young and green and under fire and certain that this was what their army was asking of them.

Morris's focus, instead, is on what the photograph documents, and what it doesn't. One MP may have escaped the harsher punishment meted out to her colleagues because the version most often seen of one notorious photo cropped her from the frame. Another lost his career and--from his point of view--the honor his family had earned in three generations of service because he was present briefly in a video of abuse, even though by all accounts his presence was in the interest of ameliorating a prisoner's suffering.

Meanwhile, for all the psychological horror of the familiar images, no one died, few were physically damaged, and no one was ever in danger of serious injury. We can debate the definition of torture, but there can be little doubt that the worst of it happened away from the cameras, at the hand of the interrogators of the OGAs--the coy acronym for "other government agencies." The stories that Lynndie English and Sabrina Harman tell may be self-serving and rich in hindsight, but at least they've faced the music--because they couldn't avoid it, once their faces and names were known, perhaps, but they've stood up. The real villains in this story are as anonymous as their hooded Iraqi victims.

Trailers

• When Did You Last See Your Father?--This doesn't elevate my original 3 vote: looks like it could be unbearably sentimental.
• The Fall--Great-looking trailer (not to be confused w/ a trailer that makes the film seem great); if it comes downtown, I may have to have another look at the Times review, but my first reading made this a "no."