The documentary begins with a psychology study, filmed in black and white. The study presented is the Milgram experiment, testing human obedience versus innate morality. It begins calm and almost-sterile, remaining so despite the protests of those being studied, despite the screams of the actor as he’s pretending to be shocked by electricity again and again. Then the shocking fact that no one stopped shocking the actor—no one was willing to disobey. This is when we dive into the actual documentary about Au Ghraib, the Iraqi prison that went from less than 1,000 prisoners to over 6,000 in a month during the Iraq war.
The documentary explains the reason behind the fall,
combining testimony from American soldiers and officers overhead the prison at
that time. The confusion and terror did not belong only to the tortured prisoners,
but also to the soldiers who were sent to be their wards directly after basic
training—where soldiers are taught, “If you question your orders, you and your
battle buddy die.” The soldiers object at first, but then are told the
information is too valuable, that they must get the information—up the ante,
basically. They are told of extreme torture techniques, stress positions,
psychological torture, etcetera that are professional interrogation techniques.
They are taught to obey and to interpret human rights as they see fit—to the
ultimate suffering of thousands of Iraqi prisoners who frequently were only
imprisoned due to a neighbor’s rumor.
These soldiers committed themselves to obedience, because
they did not know otherwise what they could do. This is the truth that could
not be revealed by simply stating, “General Miller ordered an increase of
torture.” This Ecstatic truth is not beautifully revealed, the documentary
itself is old and filmed with grainy textures over everything. Rather, the art
of this documentary, as Herzog would defend, is in its truth. The horrific
description of being naked for twenty-five days, of washing his father’s back
only to see it covered with bruises, is not nearly powerful without the human
voice saying these words. Without the slight tremor in the man’s voice, the
variability of pitch and volume that strikes at the heart of any human.
The facts will not cut it without the emotional testimony of
those involved, their eyes sometimes vacant or their hands shaking as they
describe in casual detail the horrors they committed or that they witnessed.
Without the documentary filming these people, the facts are as sterile as the
black and white study. Instead, add in sound and visual, and the horror becomes
real.
Why is it that hearing a person describe their trauma out
loud is so effective for a documentary rather than displaying text across a
screen?
[ Here's a funny cartoon to help relieve some sadness. ]
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| The Far Side by Gary Larson |
Perhaps the ecstatic truth I this documentary is overwhelming and terrifying idea of war. In times of war actions are pardoned that would not usually be if there wasn't a sense of it being necessary they way that war often is. Depicting torture via text can only give you as much as you imagination can but if the truth revealed form audio and visuals is even worse than your imagination, a larger impact is created.
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