Morris vs Vérité

Alejandro Adams offers an against-the-grain view of Errol Morris and his work at the Digital Filmmaker. Watching Vernon, Florida, for example, "the viewer is left feeling lower than a voyeur, complicit in Morris's aloof, don't-feed-the-animals approach. And if we happen not to take umbrage at his manner, we may soon find ourselves thinking, conversely, I hope I never have to drive through that part of Florida. Or any other part of the Deep South. Maybe only sophisticated urban liberals should be allowed to vote. Maybe these people should be institutionalized. Maybe I am a fascist."

In his interview with Morris for the AV Club, Noel Murray does not propose this possibility. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with Alejandro Adams, it's an engaging discussion. Besides noting that Gates of Heaven is "fucked up!" and that that's a good thing, he does get around to an issue Adams brings up (and notes, too, that he's writing a book about the issue):

Truth exists independent of style... Properly considered, it's a quest, a pursuit. To say that vérité is more truthful than something that is narrated is just misplaced. Completely wrong... If someone tells you that George Bush is not the 43rd president of the United States, they might be engaged in wishful thinking, or denial, but if they make that claim, it's either true or false! And you can assess that, regardless of whether there's an omniscient narrator, or an unreliable narrator, or it's shot in vérité, or it's manipulated, it's agitprop, whatever! It makes no difference! It's a style!

And here's the lecture he refers to in that interview.

At Not Coming to a Theater Near You, Rumsey Taylor argues that the TV series, First Person, "displays the extent of the degradation of Morris's work," though it's "still better than anything I watch regularly on television."

Posted by dwhudson at September 15, 2005 3:06 PM