Listings for Friday, May 9, through Thursday, May 15, 2008

Standard Operating Procedure

Capsule by J.R. Jones

From the Chicago Reader

The Abu Ghraib case will be prosecuted in the culture for years to come; already the documentary community has responded with Taxi to the Dark Side, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, and The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair. But this film by the masterful Errol Morris (The Fog of War, The Thin Blue Line) gets closer to the actual events than any of them, with probing interviews of soldiers who were involved and careful scrutiny of the hundreds of photographs retrieved from three digital cameras at the prison. Lynndie England, notoriously pictured with a naked prisoner on a leash, and Sabrina Harman, who gave a grinning thumbs-up beside the gray face of an Iraqi corpse, powerfully recall the ugly emotional environment inside the 372nd Military Police Company. Harman's photos helped expose what happened, but Morris argues that the photos also functioned as a cover-up: prosecution of the case centered on them, leaving free and clear many of those higher up the chain of command. R, 118 min.

This movie is currently playing at: Landmark's Century Centre

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