MovieTime

Review

by Jason Di Rosso

A documentary on the 2003 scandal sparked by the torture photos of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. If there was ever any high moral ground in the War on Terror, these images completely undermined it. Filmmaker Errol Morris interviews some of the key people here, from prison boss General Janis Karpinski to private Lynndie England—you'll remember her as the one holding a leash, attached around the neck of a male prisoner lying flat on the ground.

What emerges are the stories outside the frames of these pictures, and the systems of coercion, bullying and mismanagement that led to such behaviour. Shot in his trademark intimate style, Morris lays out his view—that only the visible and the stupid (or relatively powerless) got nicked. And he leaves you wondering if the system has changed, fundamentally, as a result of this scandal, or if it's just adapted to better hide its tracks. This will entertain and inform, but not necessarily astound because the subject matter has been treated so thoroughly already by current affairs on other media.

Director: Errol Morris
Producer: Errol Morris, Julie Bilson Ahlberg
Cinematographer: Robert Chappell & Robert Richardson, ASC
Editor: Andy Grieve, Steven Hathaway, Dan Mooney
Music: Danny Elfman
Running time: 116
Australian distributor: Sony
Language: English
Classification: MA15+