Movies Reviews

Tabloid - Movie Review

By Ron Wilkinson Jul 14, 2011, 15:08 GMT

A documentary on a former Miss Wyoming who is charged with abducting and imprisoning a young Mormon Missionary. ...more

Errol Morris succeeds against all odds in besting his previous Olympians of quirkiness.

Legendary indie director Errol Morris is best known for his Oscar winner “The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara” and his equally powerful “Standard Operating Procedure” and “The Thin Blue Line.”

This film takes a substantially different approach. It does not deal with the darkness of tragic missteps of justice caused by moral incompetence. Instead, in making a powerful statement about truth and justice, it does so in a very positive and very funny manner.

In making “Standard Operating Procedure” Morris executed one of the best philosophical investigation of the meaning of photographs currently available in media.

The film showed photographs taken by U.S. military police at the Abu Ghraib prison in late 2003 revealing torture of the prisoners there. Morris’ argument was not with the photographs; they were accepted as true beyond a doubt. The issue was the subjective interpretation of the photographs which was taken as a universal truth, when, in fact, it was anything but.

In discussing the film, Morris said, “Photographs don’t tell us who the real culprits might be… They can also serve as a cover-up, they can misdirect us… Photographs reveal and conceal, serve as exposé and cover-up.”

The director continues in this vein with “Tabloid.” This is the filmed documentary story of former Miss Wyoming Joyce McKinney. The bubbly and vivacious country girl was charged and jailed in England for abducting and imprisoning a young Mormon Missionary stationed in London.

The film contrasts two completely different stories. The first story is her story; she loved the man and went to England to rescue him. The second story, blasted with a rabid feverishness exceptional even for tabloids, is that she is an obsessive psycho who will stop at nothing to indulge her demons.
 
The key is that the tabloid story is based mostly on old photographs and advertisements unearthed from California media. The advertisements appear to be McKinney seeking, and engaging in, sex for money adventures featuring S&M, domination, humiliation and similar finely tuned carnal tastes.

By the end of the film, faced with direct one-on-one interviews and several hundred very clear and explicit photographs, the viewer is convinced of one thing. That is that they will never believe another picture as long as they live.
 
Morris’ previous great films mostly dealt with institutions, or people such as McNamara who represented institutions. One of his lesser-known movies, “Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.” is similar in its approach to “Tabloid.” Both films deal with real people who did good and bad things, for their own reasons, but who are not obviously guilty of lying, cheating or stealing.

The beauty of this film is that it is able to make those incisive, probing arguments into the nature of truth and justice and end the experience on a positive note. In the end, the audience doubts everything they have ever seen and heard.

The protagonist comes off as being quite comfortable with herself and honest in talking about her past. It is the tabloids and the public’s voracious appetite for scandal that is called into question. When the question comes up of her possibly being “barking mad” (what a wonderful British expression), this film leaves us no choice but to admit that we may be as mad as the subject.

Whereas Jessica Yu’s “Protagonist” establishes a dialog with four quirky people, Morris’ aim is not to superficially explore quirky people but to compare their alternate version of reality to ours. The combination of detective work and the celebration of that iconic American hero, the lunatic who makes good, is a recipe for success with me every time.

Morris continues his track record of dogged, detailed research. He does his homework, big time, and it shows in the power of the stories he tells. Very few people have the intelligence it takes to frame questions about the universality of truth.

Not only does he have the smarts, he has the patience of a saint and the perseverance of a bulldog required to build a foundation for an audio-visual premise that is indestructible, and unbelievable, at the same time.

This film is entertaining enough on the surface, but its real power comes in its attack on casual notions of absolute truth.

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Documentary
Directed by: Errol Morris
Featuring:
Release Date: July 15, 2011
MPAA: Not Rated
Runtime: 87 minutes
Country: USA
Language: English
Color: Color