Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Meeting of the Minds

A talk between filmmakers Erroll Morris and Werner Herzog over at The Believer:

WH: In Abu Ghraib, at least some of the photos are purely staged. But some of them are not. When they take the photos, let’s say from the second floor, and you see the soldiers and you see the prisoners somewhat down in the corridor. In many of these occasions I’m fairly convinced that nobody down there was aware that there was somebody taking photos. Or do I say that wrongly?

EM: No, no, no, not at all.

WH: But, of course, some of them are real and they are staged—let’s say, the infamous pyramid, the human pyramid. In my opinion, it’s a great exercise in stage art—a very vile, inhuman stage art.

EM: Yes.

WH: It’s like a modern form of drama, of theater, the theater of bodies to tie them up into a human pyramid of taking the last remaining dignity from them. And in this kind of staging, it’s not a random tossing of bodies on top of each other. The staging of it makes it so horrifying.


They go on to discuss their plan to dig up Ed Gein's mother's grave 35 years ago. Oh, boy.

I just watched



and liked it fine.

From a fave Herzog flick:

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

fast/cheap is one of my FAVS!!! It was my gateway film into DOCs, and have been immersed in them ever since... not that it's the best doc, mind you, but at the time (and I was a lot younger and greener, too) it really opened my eyes to different ways to tell a story...

I haven't seen it since that first time watching it, and I wonder how it's "aged?"

but I remember it fondly and talk about it all the time...

:) jv