Film Therapy: The Reader and Standard Operating Procedure

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Spoiler Alert: high-level character and plot or story information for The Reader and Standard Operating Procedure.

Coming to Terms

The newly released indie film, The Reader, is the latest feature concerning the holocaust. It is an emotional powerhouse, with great subtlety in the script, editing, and performances.

Set in the post-war period from 1958 through the mid-'90s, we see individual German characters, and the society from which they came, attempting to come to terms with what they did – and why they did it – or stood by and allowed it to happen. The people whose guilt is to be determined were low-level personnel characterized as "a few bad apples." Who participated, who led, who knew, and how responsible were they? Over sixty years after the events, Germans – indeed Germany – still struggles with its role.

Here, in mid-December, under cover of the holiday rush, our Senate Armed Services Committee released its findings on torture practices in recent US operations and their authorization by members of the Bush Administration. The report explicitly rejects the "bad apples" thesis: "The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of "a few bad apples" acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees. Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority. . ." (p. xii).

In the 2008 documentary, Standard Operating Procedure, filmmaker Errol Morris (The Fog of War) interviews Abu Ghraib's "bad apples" themselves. We come to understand the command climate in which these low-level soldiers were placed; the other agents (and agencies) to which they were subordinate; and how the rank and gender of these soldiers, in that structure, led them to do what they did – and how their involvement differed in important ways from what we thought we saw in the pictures.

In post-war Germany, public trials were held, and the entire nation was allowed the chance to understand what had happened on their watch. Over six decades have passed, and the emotional and intellectual processes continue.

While the specific actions of our two nations differ, the weight of conscience hangs heavy, for those of us in the US who know what has happened on our watch. Based on U.S. box office receipts, about 29,000 people saw Standard Operating Procedure. How many people are aware of the senate's torture findings? Will the broader US population ever be given (or take, or demand) the chance that the Germans have given themselves?

PS: See these excellent films; they are much richer and broader than I've described. (There are no real spoilers above.) S.O.P. is available through Netflix. Be sure to re-watch it with Morris' commentary turned on, if you're interested to know what students of documentary film theory 101 learn in the first week of class.

January 3, 2009