Paul Arthur, an influential film scholar and critic (and author of A Line Of Sight: American Avant-Garde Film Since 1965) died recently; one if his last pieces has now appeared in Artforum, in which he examines the techniques of "nonfiction filmmaker" Errol Morris, whose forthcoming Standard Operating Procedure is about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Arthur finds Morris guilty of choosing "to substitute metaphor for analysis"; he compares Morris's approach to that of Alex Gibney's in Taxi to the Dark Side--whose "gritty reenactments, lush landscape shots, interviews lit like Dutch portraiture, and ... ominous music track replete with vaguely religious wailing suggestive of cries of another sort... never supersede or distract from Gibney’s inflamed political indictment"--and find Morris's approach wanting.
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