This is obviously a subject that has been gone over in the media but not in this form – as ever, Morris mostly just lets his subjects talk and leaves it up to the viewer to put their own intepretation on what is being said, foregrounded even more here by the presence of the person responsible for sifting through the images describing going through exactly this process with the images. The effect is much more chilling than the condemnation of the media – the body language and the words of the soldiers speak volumes but nothing gives you enough distance to simply switch off and say “I’m not like them.”

The people in the film who feel they can say that do not always appear as morally distinct as they might hope to. The title comes from one of the things that had to be done when examining the images during the investigation – the investigator had to decide which of the images showed things that were perfectly normal interrogation techniques (the standard operating procedure) and which were crimes. His verdicts aren’t always what you might expect.

Today I watched The Order of Myths at the EIFF. The film is a documentary about the Mardi Gras celebrations in Mobile, Alabama which are currently racially segregated, though one of the major themes of the film is the ways in which people are gradually changing things for the better. It’s a very good film – lots to think about and I recommend seeing it. I imagine it will at least appear on one of the documentary strands on terrestrial TV in the UK.

During the Q&A session several of the people who appear in the film were present, including Helen Meaher who had been the white Mardi Gras queen and who is a descendant of the last person to bring a slave ship to the US. Someone in the audience had been very angered by what she’d seen in the film, including the fact that Meaher had been given that role. What struck me most of all about this was the way it was expressed: Meaher was not named or addressed in a way that acknowledged her presence (she was referred to as “the white queen” if I remember correctly) in spite of the fact that she was standing only a few meters away. It was as though this was an actress in a fictional film.

This was a striking example, but the general failure to connect with an actual person surprised me less than it should. Obviously, people in documentary films do play parts (as we all do in the various roles we fulfil) and the film may choose to represent them in a particular way but still there’s always at least some connection with the person depicted. I find it very distrurbing when that appears to get lost.

That’s not the thing that makes me happiest about the film, though. The thing that makes me happiest is that two of the characters are gay and in a long term relationship, referring to themselves as being married, and this goes completely without comment. It’s not a plot point, it’s not a character point – it’s just something that’s there in the film like the fact that one of them has brown hair. Something that the filmmakers felt that they could put in there as background colour.

This isn’t exactly a blockbuster but it’s still good to see.

Update: Just to emphasise, if you want to complain about something then the first place to start is with the laws. Get in touch with the relevant politicians or support groups that work to oppose legislation like the DMCA such as the Open Rights Group in the UK. Trying to convince people to avoid exercising their rights through negative publicity can help but there are serious limits on how much it can help.