Separated

A strong Errol Morris documentary about "family separation" policy, marred by some re-enactments.

From HarperCollins, which owns Mariner Books. Fair use

Separated (2024). Grade: C+

(This will be depressing, but there’s a cute video at the bottom.)

Separated opens with a mostly-black screen, and small images of eyes peering through slits. Those slits could be slits in a border wall, or a prison cell. Errol Morris wants you to think of a zoetrope, which is an antique device for showing moving pictures.

He wants you to listen, too. We hear Bill Clinton, then George W. Bush, then Barack Obama, then Donald Trump, all talking about the need to stop “illegal immigration.” Each, increasingly, using the language of strength and power to describe our government’s policies towards human beings.

Separated takes its title from Jacob Soboroff’s 2020 book (and Soboroff is interviewed in the film). It’s about a policy that the U.S. began in May 2017. The policy was to separate migrant parents from their children. As a means of deterring unathorized crossings. So as, supposedly, to cut down on smuggling weapons or drugs.

But it wasn’t just families making unauthorized crossings who were separated. It sometimes happened to families applying for asylum at official border entries.

And Caitlin Dickerson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2022 article about family separation describes the ineffectiveness of an earlier “tough on immigration” policy: “People carrying drugs or weapons across the border didn’t seem to care.”

Of course not. The vast majority of smugglers are U.S. citizens crossing at official border stations. (Sometimes they are addicts themselves, carrying small amounts for local small dealers). And most of this contraband is hidden on trucks.

As far as “deterring” future migrants, the concept would be ridiculous if it wasn’t so malignantly stupid. People desperate and afraid enough to begin a long, dangerous journey to another country have heard all kinds of things. They’ve heard stories and rumors about the threats and opportunities awaiting them. Sometimes those rumors, good or bad, are based in truth. Sometimes they’re complete myths.

So, why pursue a “deterrence” policy that’s unlikely to have any deterrent effect, and absolutely positively won’t make more than the slightest dent on smuggling?

In an interview with Anna Thompson, Errol Morris says he thinks some of these policymakers are simply b**terds. “I believe there’s some deep satisfaction that comes from just plain garden variety meanness and cruelty.” The cruelty is the point.

I’m sure that’s sometimes true. (When the film showed a clip of Jeff Sessions smiling with glee as he describes “tough on immigration” policies, Mrs. twinsbrewer said “he must be getting a special tingly feeling in his groin.”)

But I think some of it is also the backgrounds these policymakers have. Many come from a military or police background, where it’s common to think in terms of “threats” and “enemies” and “criminals” instead of people. And a great many come from the business world, where cruelty to employees is often seen as a great motivational strategy.

(And when these methods prove to be stupid ones for winning wars or running businesses — as they almost always prove to be — the people who promoted them will blame everyone else but themselves for their failures, and insist the methods should become stronger still.)

There’s also the matter of some people being… not too bright. Scott Lloyd, who had some experience as a minor government functionary, was appointed director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (most likely because of his fundamentalist religious beliefs, not because of any job qualifications). When subordinates warned Lloyd that there wasn’t enough adequate record-keeping about separated families, and that this would make reuniting them very difficult, Lloyd said better records would make “it look like something that isn’t happening is happening."

Lloyd’s in the film. He’s the one government official that supported family separation who agreed to be interviewed on camera. The others are all shown with news clips, of press conferences and speeches. They range from vile to dishonest to clinically unfeeling. And they all keep repeating that what they’re doing is “following the law.”

But they are not. They are breaking it. The right to seek asylum is U.S. law.

After WWII, when most of the world was ashamed of how they hadn’t accepted Jewish refugees during the Holocaust, the majority of countries signed an international treaty guaranteeing the right to seek asylum.¹

America only signed onto part of the treaty, in 1967. But it’s a treaty, not a diplomatic agreement. Congress passed it and the President signed it. That’s law.

(This is not the cute video. We’ll get there.)

Our asylum system has major problems. The chief one being, we don’t fund it properly. So people have to wait years to get a legal hearing about their application for asylum, and frequently don’t have a lawyer to help them. Part of this is cruelty; part of this is politicians caring more about big donors than big problems; and part of it is that many Americans terrified of facing poverty themselves don’t have empathy to burn worrying about others.

But the right to seek asylum is the law. Unless Congress changes it, it’s the law. If you ignore it or avoid it, you are breaking that law. A far more serious crime than an unauthorized entry into the U.S. — that’s a misdemeanor.

In the end, before the policy was repealed, around 4200 children were taken from their families. It’s thought that 1000 are now, essentially, orphans. There’s no way to find their families. (As one kind government worker in the film says, “‘when you ask a two-year-old “what’s your mother’s name?”, they say “Mommy.”’)

Tough to see a movie about. At least, near the end, Morris gives us some photographs — still photographs, not video — of families being joyfully reunited with children. That’s some relief.

There is a flaw in this film, and to my thinking, a big one.

To break from the footage of talking heads and incriminating e-mails being shown on screen, Morris stages a re-enactment of a typical migrant journey. Actors playing a mother and child as they head for the U.S. border. There’s little dialogue in these scenes, and they’re artfully framed. Too artfully. And there’s far too much of these.

Morris also used too many scenes like this in his 2017 series Wormwood (about illegal CIA behavior). Everything in an interview or a historic news clip was fascinating. Everything re-created using actors was terrible. It’s the same here. These scenes almost never should be used in a documentary.

When Morris used re-enactments in The Thin Blue Line, it was only to show how different witnesses described the crime from different vantage points. Those scenes were short and to the point.

I think the point here is to humanize what was done to these families. But that would have been far better served by interviewing them. Or showing news clips of them talking to reporters. I think this approach is a mistake; it throws you out of the movie. And Mrs. twinsbrewer agreed. She can watch almost anything in a thoughtful documentary, no matter how grim the subject. But she recoiled from those scenes and left the room.

Variety’s Peter Debruge found these scenes moving, so it’s a matter of personal taste. You’ll have to decide for yourself. And you can always read the book, instead.

Finally, this film premiered on MSNBC on December 7 of last year. It was originally produced by Participant Media, but they folded in April. MSNBC picked it up after festival showings, yet chose not to air it before the election. Fearing, probably correctly, that if the film had been widely covered in the media, it would have angered a possible future administration. It’s a cowardly decision, but I can’t say I blame them. And it likely wouldn’t have made any difference in the outcome.

Alright — cute video time!

That’s Morris on the strings. This video is from Morris’s own website. He’s got links to all kinds of interesting things on there, check it out sometime.

There’s also a lovely 23-minute film Morris made in 2015, The Subterranean Stadium. It originally showed on ESPN. It’s about nice older guys who play an electric football game with each other — not a video game, one with little plastic players on a vibrating metal sheet.² I wrote about it here.

It’s gone from the original website and from YouTube, but Moxie Pictures has it on their website. And Being Mr. Met, about, well, being the Mets mascot. It’s as funny as it sounds.

So hey, even Errol Morris isn’t depressed all the time.

1. America’s refusal to take in Jewish refugees is covered in Ken Burns’s excellent film, The U.S. and the Holocaust. Essential viewing for those who don’t know that story.

2. A company still makes these, by the way! Tudor Games. Their customer base is small but very loyal. Good for them.