The truth is out there. But the quickest way to it might be to hew to the lies. Or so suggested documentary master Errol Morris one afternoon on the phone.
“The truth can be learned from examining falsehood,” said Morris, who won an Academy Award in 2004 for “The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara.” “I am far, far more distrustful of things that are presented as gospel truth than things that are presented as gospel falsehood,” he said from Cambridge, Mass.
In 1988, Morris gave us “The Thin Blue Line.” The film told the story of death-row inmate Randall Dale Adams, who’d been found guilty of the murder of a Dallas patrolman.
Morris mixed interviews – with detectives, dodgy witnesses, lawyers – with atmospheric re-creations of the crime. He also used text, and even a swinging pocket watch, to further the narrative. Most effectively, he presented jailhouse interviews with Adams and David Harris, the young man to whom Adams offered a ride back in 1976 – and the likely killer.
In 1989, Adams was released. Morris’ documentary was credited with saving a man’s life.
Next week, MGM Home Entertainment will release two box sets of Morris’ work: a collection of remastered versions of Morris’ earliest documentaries. (In addition to “The Thin Blue Line” are 1978’s “Gates of Heaven,” about a pained dust-up involving a pet cemetery; and “Vernon, Florida.”) The other set covers the complete two-season series of “First Person,” Morris’ television show. What follows are some thoughts about truth, lies, videotape and film from the nation’s best teller of nonfiction tales.
Q: How often do you return to your old films?
A: Well, I returned to these films because they were all retransferred for DVD. The technology for transferring film to digital media has progressed in the last 10, 15 years. “Vernon” was actually shot in widescreen. Self-serving of me to say, but it looks so much better.
Q: That provides a nice segue into a conversation about the aesthetic choices you make.
A: One of the things I felt strongly about since my very first film was that documentaries could have as strong an aesthetic as fiction films. (Criticisms) certainly became part of the response to “The Thin Blue Line.” “This doesn’t look like a documentary; this isn’t really a documentary.” I suppose it’s what you mean by documentary. But I’ve always believed that there’s a very strong documentary element in all of my films. After all, it’s real people speaking in their own words. We’re not seeing an actor play Robert McNamara. We’re not seeing actors playing the fall guy and the real killer in “The Thin Blue Line.”
Q: Last year, I got a barrage of e-mails that seemed to want film critics to vet the assertions of documentarians. Do you have advice about how people should look at documentaries?
A: Everybody would love the idea that we could just have truth handed over on a silver platter. But there’s no Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval that tells you that this is unassailable truth. I’ve tried to do something somewhat odd in engaging the whole issue. And maybe this is a perverse element in me, but instead of making a claim that this is objective, or this is truthful, I actually tilt in the opposite direction. I give you something that is clearly untruthful, something that is clearly subjective. That was the essence of “Thin Blue Line.” You were presented with endless self-deceptions, lies, confusions, misrepresentations. But somehow out of that whole mess – which is the world or how we see the world – you have an idea of what the underlying reality, the truth, might have been.
NEW ON DVD
The Upside of Anger *** 1/2 There aren’t many downsides to writer-director Mike Binder’s dark, comic charmer about a woman whose husband disappears on her and their four daughters. Terry Wolfmeyer (Joan Allen) isn’t a desperate housewife. She’s a furious one. Ask daughters Hadley, Andy, Emily and Popeye, played well by Alicia Witt, Erika Christensen, Keri Russell and the ever-compelling Evan Rachel Wood. Allen is searing and wincingly funny as a woman fueling her flames with vodka tonics. Kevin Costner – in fine laid-back yet layered form – plays Denny, neighbor, former major-league star turned radio personality and fellow drinker. R; 116 minutes (Lisa Kennedy)
XXX: State of the Union * 1/2 Early in this fast, furious but essentially empty sequel to “XXX,” National Security Agency agent Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) realizes that he and members of his former military unit are targets in a series of attacks. Vin Diesel’s Xander Cage is no longer. Gibbons needs a new XXX – one “with more attitude.” Cue the rap music. Visit a prison. The new one, played by the often personable performer Ice Cube – well, he sure can scowl. In “State of the Union” there’s a lot for former Navy SEAL Darius Stone to glower about once he’s sprung from a military prison by Gibbons. The state of the union is more fragile than the president knows. His secretary of defense is well aware of an impending coup. PG-13; 101 minutes (Lisa Kennedy)
Constantine *** Keanu Reeves finally finds another vehicle that suits his nearly comatose line readings. He is the cynical, seen-it-all detective John Constantine, cursed and gifted with the power of seeing demons and angels. He exorcises evil the way Superman dispatches villains, then spits epithets at the Catholic Church, which he both loathes and longs for. The debate over good and evil, and just who is watching over us, gives the comic-book horror satisfying depth. R; 120 minutes (Michael Booth)
