★★★
Errol Morris has a long and storied career as one of America’s premier documentarians. So it’s a shame to report that his latest, Separated, is such a damp squib. The film tackles the vital issue of the separation of children from parents at the US-Mexico border, a Trump administration policy designed to deter asylum seekers and other immigrants. The film does solid work in detailing the timeline by which the policy was secretly implemented, hidden even from the department tasked with handling unaccompanied minors, who initially didn’t realise where so many new children were coming from. Morris does enough to indicate where the main culpability appears to lie – Trump himself, his ideologue adviser Stephen Miller, and those political appointees around them who were willing to do their bidding. I came away at least informed about what had happened and who had signed off on it, and there is value in that.
But all but one of the people who truly supported this policy refuse to take part in the documentary, or even give a statement. There’s a little TV and press conference footage to try and compensate for that, but not much. Morris at one point suggests that some Trump policies in this area (he doesn’t bother to say which ones) are still upheld by the Biden administration – but doesn’t get any comment from anyone in that administration either, and perhaps caught out by the Democrats’ change of 2024 candidate he doesn’t mention Kamala Harris even once. The resulting documentary is therefore mostly a series of people in sober workwear addressing the camera and walking the audience through the story of who emailed what to who, when.
The one exception – a particularly dumb-looking apparatchik who somehow agreed to be questioned on film and umms and errs his way through some pointed questions – is a partially satisfying hate figure in the moment. But everyone else here is too smart to engage with Morris, and what’s left is an important document but not a satisfying documentary. With other 1,000 children still not reunited with their parents, and Trump boasting he’ll re-implement the policy if re-elected, it’s a great shame that this enquiry was partially neutralised.
Separated plays at the Venice Film Festival today.
Whitlock&Pope 