NOTES ON ERROL MORRIS

As he proudly avers, No hand-held camera, no available light, no nothing of that sort. A camera planted on a tripod in front of people speaking. Breaking stylistic conventions but still pursuing truth (Morris 2005a).

I put my face on the Teleprompter or, strictly speaking, my live video image. For the fi rst time, I could be talking to someone, and they could be talking to me and at the same time looking directly into the lens of the camera. Now, there was no looking off slightly to the side. No more faux fi rst person. This was the true fi rst person. (Morris 2004)

Una voz distintiva del cineasta que se plasma en.

A key aspect about his subjects and the fascination they arouse on us As the people he is fi lming pursue or avoid truths about the world and about themselves, at times intending to deceive their interlocutor and/or themselves, Morris must entertain the possibility that he is being deceived or deceiving himself. And we, too, must entertain that possibility about ourselves. However transparent, even laughable, we may fi nd the deceptions or self-deceptions of these interviewees or storytellers, Morris provides usand himselfno secure position from which to assume our own superiority to them. Morriss storytellers may be considered unreliable narrators, Perez writes, not because theyre liars, not because theyre crazy, but because we cant be sure how far to trust them, because the ground on which to credit them or discredit them has been pulled out from under us. Morris may not endorse them but neither does he disparage them. His irony is not at their expense. Rather, its directed at us in the audience, and it leaves us unsettled, in suspension.

explorar la naturaleza humana interview -> storrytelling Which is to say that these talking heads given center stage and allowed to talk on cease being mere interviewees and become full-fl edged storytellers about the way of irony works through editing By inserting footage from Frankenstein (the man says hes always admired Dr. Frankenstein), or from Leni Riefenstahls Olympia (the man talks about the beautiful bodies well all have when we rise from the frozen), Morris makes a kind of ironic comment. But mostly he withholds comment, and his irony lies mostly in his withholding of comment. Its the irony of the eiron , the man who pre tends he knows nothing and has nothing to say. Its the irony of the self-effacing author. (p.17) trusting in the testimony Morriss storytellers may be considered unreliable narrators, not

because theyre liars, not because theyre crazy, but because we cant be sure how far to trust them, because the ground on which to credit them or discredit them has been pulled out from under us. Morris may not endorse them but neither does he disparage them. His irony is not at their expense. Rather, its directed at us in the audience, and it leaves us unsettled, in suspension. Morriss irony cuts both ways: these narrators may be unreliable, but he credits them enough to let them take over, to lend them in his fi lms the authority of storytellers, which normally they wouldnt enjoy. alternative storytellers in his long length features relative to the use of titles If their whimsical course does not entirely abandon the words, the relationship at least becomes ambiguous, rippling with irony, play, and contradiction

Thus when nothing immediate is at stake, for example, the guilt or innocence of a man on death row, Morris takes deeper interest in the stories people tell and the web of beliefs they weave than in whether those beliefs are true or false. Morris seems to think that most of them are false.

They are about people, and especially the content of and motivations for peoples beliefs. Morris makes strategic use of the fi lmed interview (see Lesson #8) in part because he is fascinated by the mental landscapes of his subjects. Truth matters. But in many cases, the truth is less interesting than the human dreamscapes that provide the bizarre and somewhat morbid topography of Errol Morriss work.

The manifestation of language in voice, gesture, facial expression, and posture contribute greatly to the value of the fi lmed interview, and make it one of the essential tools of the documentary fi lmmaker. This is especially true for a fi lmmaker such as Errol Morris, who is less interested in the surface features of the visual world than in the interiority of the human mental landscape.

KEY Spoken Words and Written Language

In much of his work, Morris seems fascinated with written language and other visual symbols not as guarantors of truth but almost as fetish objects that have a material signifi cance of their own, or that might lead to misleading fi xations on framing ideas or concepts.

Morris often cuts to extreme close-ups of words or phrases isolated from their contexts, for example, stopped for, oh, my gosh, guilty, no description.