We may think that we no longer believe, as we did way back in the 20th century, the adage that “The camera never lies.” But it’s a hard habit to break, and consciously or not we tend to accept photographic evidence as conclusive. When we saw the notorious photographs of Iraqi prisoners being humiliated and abused at Abu Ghraib, we were universally appalled at the images, not only of humans being treated this way, but of female American soldiers laughing at the victims, apparently enjoying their humiliation. In his new film Standard Operating Procedure, Errol Morris interviews five of the seven MPs indicted for their actions at Abu Ghraib (the others were in prison) and other relevant figures to deconstruct what those photos seem to show. This is by no means an apologia for what went on at Saddam Hussein’s former center for the torture and execution of dissidents. Rather, Morris argues that there was more to the story than was seen in these photographs, which were not as artless as they appear (he obsessively tries to reconstruct the larger perspectives in which they were staged and cropped). And he makes a case that, without release them from moral culpability, these soldiers were not aberrant “bad apples” but rather participants in officially approved procedures that were in place when they arrived on duty—the “standard operating procedure” for softening up prisoners prior to questioning. The argument that blame belongs higher up the chain of command is not a new one, and the most distressing thing about watching this documentary is the realization of how easily this case, which lost the US so much respect in the eyes of the world, was swept under the carpet. As usual, Morris constructs his argument with so much cinematic melodrama (staged recreations, a horror-movie score by Danny Elfman) that you might suspect him of trying to bludgeon the opinions of the most uninvolved potential viewers, were his Blow-Up-ish determination to look beyond the frames of these endless photographs not as off-putting to an audience that just wants to be told who the bad guy is.

—m. faust