Errol Morris: Detective-Director
„God is love – Backwards It’s Dog“ (Inscription on a grave of a California pet cemetery, in Errol Morris‘ „Gates of Heaven“, 1978)
“If we cannot solve the mysteries of this world, it is our job to at least try and explore them”, said the American documentary director, Errol Morris, once in an interview. Yet the paths to the secrets of the world which Morris follows are twisted. He presents a clerk who is above all attracted to serial killers. A man stores his frozen mother´s head in a secret place or an autistic woman, empathizing with cattle, designs the interior of stables and abattoirs. The filmed cosmos, into which Errol Morris invites his audience is a panorama of human peculiarities. His protagonists are driven by their obsessions right in the middle of everyday American life. The way Morris mixes science, poetry and pure madness is virtuoso. And what begins as a portray of eccentric individuals develops into a sophisticated meditation about the erratic nature of man.
With the exception of one feature film, Morris has created since 1978 six documentaries which have won numerous awards. Working independently with his own production company, he started directing commercial spots in the eighties. Morris gained international recognition with portrayals, such as ”A Brief History of Time“ (1992, Tue, 26.6.) about the paralysed physician Stephen Hawking and ”Mr. Death“ (1999, Sat, 23.6., Fri, 29.6.), which reconstructs the daily life of an engineer of execution machines.
Popular epistemology and finding the truth
Despite a discernible willingness for style and an obsession for details, Morris’ technique remains clearly controversial. For example, scenarios considered on a video and audio level, especially the soundtrack, play a key role for the “ Non Fiction Auteur“ (Morris about Morris). Due to an effect-filled set up of archive material, news images, interviews and reconstructed scenes with slow-motion effects, the purists of the Cinéma Verité from the old school of real truth seekers have excommunicated Morris from their community long ago. However, the supporters of the New Documentary, as it is called, worship his ironic, reflective and manifold style.
Thus Morris‘ work is constantly intervening in the policies of filmed reality, as well. A highlight in documentary work, his films maintain their epistemological foundation, despite their popular form, their emotional effect and their appeal to the audience, the pieces still remain.
Morris has been criticized for refusing to conclude his films with a black or white truth, especially in his last documentary film, “Mr Death” from 1999. The portrayal of Fred A. Leuchter´s unhappy life as an honest engineer refrains from demonising his character, an expert for killing machines and denier of the Holocaust, and reflects more the theory from Hannah Arendt on the banality of evil.
”Life is too complex and evanescent to provide closure in a documentary about someones identity and deeds,“ Morris demands from the mature viewer. Still, he repeatedly has sensational revelations, strokes of luck for investigative documentation, the most remarkable probably being “The Thin Blue Line“ (1988, Thu, 21.6.), a movie about the assassination of a police officer in Dallas in the year 1976. Not only does Morris prove that the alleged killer was unjustifiably arrested, he even makes the real murderer confess to his crimes on tape.
For Morris, language is in general the key to his cryptic stories. Only direct statements and obvious self scenarios unveil human destinies. Therefore, “talking heads” are the center of attention in his movies. In extensive, absolutely directed interviews, they speak directly into the camera. In order to optimize this situation, Morris developed a recording technique, the Interrotron, as it is called. It was first applied in the internationally celebrated “Fast, Cheap & Out of Control“ (1997, Tue, 26.6, Fri, 28.6). Constructed out of an autocue, the Interrotron, which eventually was developed into the Megatron, allows the interviewee to look directly into to camera and thus at the viewer. That way, these images create a special larger-than-life and almost hypnotic effect.
Philosophy, serial killers and the “forensic“ look
Morris´ philosophy studies laid the foundation for his complex oeuvre, but above all it is based in his deep fascination for life-long, human passions. For two years, he worked as a private detective which helped to sharpen his “forensic” look and to put together fragments of reality to form a story. Accordingly he sees himself as a ”detective-director“ rather than a ”writer-director“. When he received the possibility to contact famous serial killers, such as Ed Gein, he dropped his studies immediately. During his research, Morris met Werner Herzog, who later became his colleague and friend. The German author and film producer assured him, if Morris succeeded in finishing his film “Gates of Heaven,“ (1978, Wed, 27.6., Fri, 29.6.) he would eat his shoe. And Herzog indeed had the pleasure, as is documented in “Werner Herzog eats his Shoe“ (1980, Thu, 21.6., Mon, 25.6., Sat, 30.6.) by the renowned film producer Les Blank.
Born in 1948, Morris now lives with his family in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Today, he belongs to the few film producers who have succeeded in distinguishing themselves with an authentic style in the immense non-fiction world. His films also made their way to the big cinema screens. For Bravo TV and Channel 4, he recently developed the TV-series “First Person“ (2000, Fri, 22.6, Sat, 23.6., Sun, 1.7.), which will have its premiere in Germany during the Cologne Conference. Starting the work for this series of half-hour interviews in the mid-nineties, he once again has proven to be a chronist of human eccentrics, yet without ever distancing himself from his protagonists, or even judging them. Being a driven man himself, Morris feels committed to his interview partners and their obsessions: “I am very much like my characters.....“
The Cologne Conference, together with the Kölner Filmhaus is pleased to present the work of this extraordinary “non-fiction auteur.“ The presentation is sponsored by the Filmbüro NW e.V. and is jointly organized with the Filmmuseum München.