‘Wormwood’ is among Morris’ best work
As I admitted on our Spokane Public Radio show "Movies 101," more and more we review movies that we see on our televisions. One such movie was a six-part documentary that we watched via Netflix. Following is the review of that documentary that I wrote for SPR:
Barbara Kopple and Frederick Wiseman are giants of the documentary film. Both are known for making the kinds of cinematic explorations that depend mostly on the unobtrusive, fly-on-the wall method of observation.
That’s the key behind Kopple’s two Oscar-winning films “Harlan County, U.S.A.” and “American Dream.” And behind Wiseman’s much-admired works “Titicut Follies,” “Meat,” “Near Death” and dozens more.
Errol Morris is also a documentary filmmaker. From the beginning, though, Morris set out to create something different. As Isaac Butler wrote for the online magazine Slate, Morris’ “signature style” embodied “a hypnotic blend of talking-head interviews, swirling cutaways to evidence, slow motion, a pulsing Philip Glass score and” – perhaps most important – the “pioneering use of re-enactments.”
It was the whole of Morris’ unique style, but largely his use of “re-enactments,” that caused some documentary critics initially to dismiss both him and his movies. His landmark 1988 film “The Thin Blue Line” wasn’t even nominated for an Academy Award. In fact, Morris didn’t receive an Oscar nomination until 2004’s “The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara” – which, reflecting a change in Academy attitude, went on to win.
Now Morris has stretched the notion of what constitutes a documentary feature even further with his six-part Netflix offering. Titled simply “Wormwood,” Morris’ film – which was written by Kieran Fitzgerald, Steven Hathaway and Molly Rokosz – explores what happened to a man named Frank Olson, whose death in 1953 aroused a mystery that haunts at least one member of his family even today.
Olson was a scientist working for the U.S. Army. He either jumped, fell or was pushed out a 13th-floor window of a New York hotel. Initial reports pointed to accidental death. Then in 1975, the government offered a different explanation: Olson, went the story, was part of an experiment involving LSD. After being given the drug, he developed suicidal tendencies, which ended in his death. Olson’s family, summoned to the White House, received a personal apology from then-President Gerald Ford.
But one member of the family, the dead man’s son Eric, wasn’t convinced. And it is he who becomes the focus of Morris’ film, a modern Hamlet obsessed with finding the truth about his father’s death, convinced that death was not an accident or a suicide but actually a murder. In the book of Revelations, after all, Wormwood is a fallen star than makes water both bitter and deadly.
As a documentarian, Morris relies heavily on talking-head interviews, not just with Eric Olson but with a number of others who offer opinions on what truly happened, including investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. But he also offers those afore-mentioned re-enactments, using Peter Sarsgaard to portray the elder Olson and, among others, Tim Blake Nelson as one of Olson’s superiors.
The result is a fascinating hybrid production, part documentary, part spy film, part commentary, part character study and – overshadowing all its moving parts – wholly an accusation. As such, it is one of the most intriguing works yet from a man who has spent his career creating the unexpected.