The Errant Æsthete

A fascinating read out of the NY Times by documentary director Errol Morris who provides an in-depth view of what constitutes the truth in film and photography following his own highly publicized reenactment in the groundbreaking film “The Thin Red Line” that successfully reversed the fate of a 26-year-old man sentenced to die in the Texas electric chair for a crime he did not commit.

“The engine of uncovering truth is not some special lens or even the unadorned human eye; it is unadorned human reason. It wasn’t a cinema vérité documentary that got Randall Dale Adams out of prison. It was film that re-enacted important details of the crime. It was an investigation – part of which was done with a camera. The re-enactments capture the important details of that investigation. It’s not re-enactments per se that are wrong or inappropriate. It’s the use of them. I use re-enactments to burrow underneath the surface of reality in an attempt to uncover some hidden truth.

But what about the reporter who thought I had been out on the roadway? Maybe I could have been there – by pure happenstance – 10 years before I started work on the film, out there on the roadway with a film crew. Unlikely, but possible. I wasn’t, but that isn’t the point. Is the problem that we have an unfettered capacity for credulity, for false belief, and hence, we feel the need to protect ourselves from ourselves? If seeing is believing, then we better be damn careful about what we show people, including ourselves – because, regardless of what it is – we are likely to uncritically believe it.”