Editor's Blog
Sam Diener, editor of Peacework Magazine, muses on global thought and local action. He will also highlight the online musings of the authors of Peacework Magazine. Please read the guidelines of Peacework's blogs and forums to participate in the discussion.
In part 1 of documentary film-maker Errol Morris' column in the New York Times, he is being too modest regarding the role of reenactments in The Thin Blue Line.
I saw The Thin Blue Line almost 20 years ago, so my memory might be fuzzy (part of Morris' point, of course), but from what I remember, Morris vividly re-enacts the point of view of each flawed witness, and uses the discrepancies in the testimony to then show us how false that re-enactment was. Every carefully choreographed re-enactment in the movie is filmed with a clarity that at first seems persuasive, and then the film reveals how false that version of events most likely was. It's the best non-fiction detective story I've ever seen.
His movie depicts how misleading reenactments can be in other films, but is scrupulous in its own use of them. Most tellingly, the version of events which at the end of the film are revealed to be most likely is the one version Morris declines to show us, instead filming an audio tape as it un-spools the jail-door-opening confession.
One brilliant aspect of the film is that it reenacts how flawed our memories are, and the intense motivation to lie about them, especially when we experience or take part in traumatic events. As a result, the movie makes a devastating case against the death penalty. What other films would you add to a list of movies to show to someone who does not (yet?) oppose the death penalty?
(Please see other Peacework coverage of death penalty issues).
By the way, Morris' next film, Standard Operating Procedure, which won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival, is his account of the crimes committed by US soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison. It's scheduled to open this spring in the US. Given Morris' amazing pedigree of films, it will probably be essential viewing - for those of us already committed to ending torture by the US, and, perhaps even more so, for those who have doubts. (Please see additional Peacework coverage of efforts to expose and end torture from the last two years, and from 1999 to the present).
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