By Daniel S.
Errol Morris is one of America’s leading documentary filmmakers with a long career of thoughtful and provocative features. Morris combines dramatic reenactments, probing interviews and a kaleidoscope of thematically linked images to create films that push the boundaries of nonfiction narrative. His signature invention is a special camera rig he calls the Interrotron, which allows him to carry on a face-to-face interview with his subject while still having them look directly into the lens and thus create the feeling that they are having a conversation with the audience. The Library has nine of his films. Here are my three favorites.
The Thin Blue Line (1988) brought Morris to prominence when he used his skill as an interviewer and a filmmaker to delve into the decade-old murder of a Texas state trooper. During the course of his research, he came to realize that the wrong man had been convicted and sentenced for the crime, partly based on the testimony of the actual murderer.
A Brief History of Time (1991) has recently been added to our collection in a lovely new Criterion edition; previously the film had only been available on VHS! Morris adapts Professor Stephen Hawking’s landmark book on astrophysics into an engaging tour of the outer limits of what we can know about the universe.
What do a topiary gardener, a lion tamer, a robotics engineer and a specialist in naked mole rats have in common? In Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997), Morris weaves interviews with four eccentric and passionate experts together with a bewildering variety of old stock footage to create a thoroughly amazing portrait of obsessed genius.
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