Simply put, since we watched Errol Morris's film Mr Death in class last week, I've been unable to get it out of my head. For one, the film made a strong impression on me simply because of its disturbing content, as I always find Holocaust denial to be a bit hard to watch since, to (poorly) paraphrase the words of a character from my favorite television show The West Wing, if the Holocaust hadn't happened, I'd have a heck of a lot more relatives around today. Because of this, I was greatly frustrated by Morris's unwillingness to confront the film's protagonist, Fred Leuchter, about his disturbingly false "scientific findings" from Auschwitz. In my mind, while Morris's views on the lack of an absolute truth in history are interesting, when applied to a topic as explosive as Holocaust denial there comes a point when it is necessary to simply say, "You are wrong and here is why." While Morris did to a degree rebut Leuchter's views by interviewing historian/researcher Robert Jan van Pelt, by placing the two side by side in his documentary I fear Morris had the likely unintended consequence of legitimizing Leuchter's views. In other words, Leuchter's beliefs were unquestionably wrong, and as anyone who follows international news can attest, Holocaust denial is not a problem of the past and it still affects many today (For proof, I would recommend one peruse just about any speech given by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad). Therefore, I felt that by placing Leuchter and Pelt's views side by side, Morris unwittingly legitimized Leuchter's views and gave him a platform to preach his false beliefs with nothing in the way to directly challenge him. All that said, I understand that this is in large part simply a result of Errol Morris's filmmaking style, in which his subject speaks directly into the camera in a manner which resembles a character giving a monologue. Therefore, it was somewhat understandable that Morris did not go further in challenging Leuchter. Still, I cannot help but be frustrated by Morris's lack of a direct challenge to Leuchter, especially when, in my opinion, Leuchter's false views are not only wrong but are also dangerous specifically because they are purported to be scientific findings which "prove" the Holocaust to have been a myth. These are not simply the misguided views of a misguided and ignorant person, but rather views which are dangerous in that they can be used by other people to justify anti-Semitism in the world today. Therefore, I believe Morris's unwillingness to directly challenge Leuchter is a failing on his part, a failing which ultimately undermines his film.
Additionally, I also would like to discuss Zoe Druick's article on the film, an article that was both informative while also being another source of frustration for me. Druick tries to pinpoint a number of director Errol Morris's most salient themes which run through his films. In particular, as Druick notes early in her piece, a primary concern in Morris's films is "the human tendency toward self-deception" (207), as well as the idea of truth being in someway an unattainable object (208). Both themes are clearly represented in Morris's The Thin Blue Line, the latter through the ever-changing reenactments of the murder at the heart of the film, the former through the various witnesses whose particular views of things are colored by their own self-deceptions. I think notably of the sequence involving a key witness to the crime, a woman who proudly boasts of how she always enjoyed playing detective as Morris cuts in footage of old crime films. Here, Morris shows the truth to be unknowable as witnesses are too affected by their own self-deceptions.
Morris attempts to do something similar in Mr. Death by demonstrating the self-delusions of Leuchter. In Druick's article, she claims that the "film's key image of self-deception" is Leuchter's belief in the existence of such a thing as a "humane execution." Here, in my opinion, Druick's argument begins to show cracks. Of course, Druick is correct in saying that there is something of an irony in speaking of a humane execution, but that irony is based on the assumption that there is something that is at least in part ethically dubious about capital punishment. On the other hand if one were to believe that capital punishment is justified and contains no moral complications, then there would seem to be no self-deception on Leuchter's part here. After all, if one is to assume that it is completely morally justifiable to execute a person for having committed a crime (something I would not agree with, but something Leuchter clearly does), then it would seem to be a good thing to at least make their death as painless as possible. After all, the eighth amendment to our constitution expressly forbids against "cruel and unusual punishment." And, despite what I would say is a somewhat uneven recent history in the United States regarding this issue of cruel and unusual punishment, it is still an ideal which our country should attempt to live up to. Therefore, I would argue that this is not a true case of self-deception, but rather is an instance where Druick attempts to apply her own ethical beliefs onto the film.
For this reason, I belief Druick in her piece commits what David Hackett Fischer calls "the moralistic fallacy," (79) that is the fallacy of imprinting one's own moral opinions on to the work of another. This brand of moralizing is especially dangerous I belief when applied to film historians given the immense possibilities for moralizing in the medium of film and in film history. Seemingly all movies do at least a bit of moralizing, even the dumb ones like Sandra Bullock's latest movie, Blindside (Poor African-American children are best served finding a rich white woman sympathetic to their plight to "save" them from the ghetto). Therefore, it is easy for those who write about film to judge films based on their own moral codes, and yet this is a recipe for disaster in my opinion. Now, I'm sure many of you are probably thinking that wasn't this fallacy exactly what I committed when I criticized Morris earlier in this post for not confronting Leuchter over his views? However, I would argue that my criticism of Morris comes out of my own belief that his filmmaking style, while undeniably captivating, shows itself to be flawed when applied to a historical issue as universally significant as Holocaust denial as opposed to, say, a murder taking place in Texas during the 1970's. On the other hand, I feel that Druick makes a mistake when she states that the main self-deception of Leuchter is his belief in the possibility of such a thing as a humane execution, for all the reasons stated previously. Druick clearly does not belief in the possibility for a "humane execution" without immense irony, but she lets her own opinions on the subject cloud her judgment of the film and of Leuchter. While I felt most of the rest of Druick's article was strong, I found myself unable to wholly subscribe to her argument due to what I perceive to be the fallacy she commits here.
-Ben Strassfeld
P.S. To all that managed to actually read through this entire thing, my sincerest apologies for this inordinately long blog post.
2 comments:
i agree that Errol Morris' ambivalent, formally conflicted filmmaking style is problematic and "flawed." Having said that,* i am not convinced that the subjects of The Thin Blue Line and Mr. Death warrant radically (or meaningfully) different approaches. Holocaust denial is certainly a "universally significant" issue, but why can the same not be said of capital punishment? And surely Morris, in The Thin Blue Line, critically examines more than just "a murder taking place in Texas during the 1970s." (One could argue that the "murder" Morris is interested in is the pending execution of an innocent man by a thoroughly flawed criminal justice system. What could be more "universal" or "significant" than that?)
ed
*Not that there's anything wrong with that.
First off, nice Curb reference.
Having said that, I perhaps didn't explain myself well in my initial blog post. I especially regret the rather flippant line about The Thin Blue Line having been just about "a murder taking place in Texas during the 1970s." I didn't mean to make it sound as if the life of an innocent man was in anyway unimportant, though obviously reading back what I wrote it certainly sounds like that.
What I really was trying to say, and I probably didn't explain this well, was that what made The Thin Blue Line such a compelling film was that it took a single event, the murder of a police officer, and dramatized the event out of the memories and stories told by the key witnesses. Watching the "reality" of the event change according to the testimonies of different witnesses was a lesson in how our perceptions of an event can be drastically warped by our own biases.
My problem, therefore, with Mr. Death is that I feel Morris used too similar a filmmaking style as he did in The Thin Blue Line. By placing Leuchter and Pelt side by side talking about Auschwitz and its history, I felt that Morris attempted to incorporate the same techniques he used in The Thin Blue Line, but this time with far diminished results. In my opinion, this was because while it is interesting to see the ways in which people (mis)remember a certain event in their lives (i.e. the murder of a police officer), it is altogether a different story when you are having two people present their views on an issue like whether the Holocaust even occurred or not. In my mind, in The Thin Blue Line, Morris investigates the truth while acknowledging that in the end, to a degree, the absolute truth is unknowable. And, unfortunately, in my opinion Morris, by using similar filmmaking techniques, implied a similar message about the Holocaust in Mr. Death, and it is for that reason I felt so uncomfortable about the film and its message.
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