All memorizations about the documentary were broken and redefined in 1988. That year, Errol Morris' documentary "The Thin Blue Line", which deals with the murder of a cop in Texas, was screened.
Morris scrutinized the details of the case; found inconsistencies, obfuscated evidence, unexplored claims. Thanks to the documentary's findings, it was revealed that the wrong person was convicted. Moreover, the confession of the real killer was included in the documentary.
Errol Mark Morris (born February 5, 1948) is an American film director known for documentaries that interrogate the epistemology of its subjects. In 2003, his documentary film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. His film The Thin Blue Line placed fifth on Sight & Sound's poll of the greatest documentaries ever made.
Morris was outright journalistic. But it was the technique he used that set the film apart from a news program or a series of articles. “The Thin Blue Line” frequently resorted to reenactments, occasionally setting the backdrop to dramatic music that added to the tension. These methods may seem familiar now, but they generated a lot of controversy at the time. The movie was not even nominated for an Oscar for this reason.
Over the years, Morris' film has inspired many other documentarians. It has raised the bar not only in terms of form and expression, but also in terms of content. Over time, the goal of every documentary is “That's it!” It turned into a quest for shock. A confession, a new finding that would change the course of history, a special news were essential. The businessman, the suspected murderer, confessed to the murder to the cameras, the children molested by Michael Jackson told what happened, it was the first time a cave was entered, this tiger species was seen for the first time, these images were broadcast for the first time... He implicitly and politely dominated the documentary, ignoring the expressions that diminished its effect.
Concentrating and exaggerating the details that will not be interesting and shocking in the documentary is also accepted. Or it is ignored. From time to time, history can even be rewritten, while some are forgotten, some events are selected and reminded with tweezers.
According to classical acceptance, documentary is a format related to news, which deals with a subject in depth and does this in the visual medium. A subject is discussed in its entirety, whichever side it has is made to speak or tried to be spoken, and at the end either a judgment is made or the decision is left to the audience. It is vital to be as objective as possible, to approach the subject with a journalistic distance, and not to turn the documentary into an epic of admiration.
The Fog of War
The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara is a 2003 documentary produced in the United States. In the work directed by Errol Morris, the United States Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara explains his views on modern warfare in the form of interviews. The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and was screened out of competition at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival.
Director Errol Morris created the documentary with archival footage, cabinet minutes, as well as an interview with Robert McNamara, who was 85 at the time, for a total of about 20 hours. The documentary tells the story of McNamara's life, his start in business, and later becoming the defense minister during the presidency of John F. Kennedy. McNamara conveys his observations on international events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War, in which he was involved as part of his duty, and shares the lessons he learned from such events with the audience.
2020
A love story dipped in LSD by Errol Morris
The last subject of the filmmaker Errol Morris, whose name we turn to attention the moment we hear his name, is the love of Timothy Leary, an American psychologist who has become a symbol of counterculture and known for his defense of LSD, and Joanna-Harcourt Smith, one of the Swiss high society of the time. The synopsis of the psychedelic love story that sprouted in Leary's fugitive life in Europe and other parts of the world, who escaped from the USA, is as follows:
“Why did LSD's 'High Priest' Timothy Leary become a narcotic in 1974? Why did he abandon the millions he was trying to open up and fit in? Was his great love, Joanna-Harcourt Smith, actually a pawn of the government or just a rich beauty and adventurous lover? Looking back, Joanna doesn't know the answer to that. In My Psychedelic Love Story, Morris and Smith go together and reexamine this chaotic period in Smith's life.”
In the documentary, the veil of secrecy is opened about the process of Leary's exile and his imprisonment. In fact, an answer is sought to the question of whether it cooperates with the government. The great love between Leary and Smith in My Psychedelic Love Story works on the axis of commitment-betrayal.
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