Errol Morris remains one of cinema’s best documentary filmmakers. However, despite his amazing back catalogue of true-life films, he remains absent from the Criterion Collection. That looks like it is about to change. IFC President Jonathan Sehring said in an interview that Criterion would plan on releasing a number of Morris’ films. Nothing has been heard since then about the films until now. The first movie to hit Criterion from Morris’ collection will be “A Brief History of Time.
Here is a look at that film and others that you should expect to see from Morris on the Criterion Collection.
“A Brief History of Time”
One of the lesser seen documentaries by Errol Morris, “A Brief History of Time” tells the story of physicist Stephen Hawking and features a number of interviews with family and friends, as well as a score by Philip Glass. Named after the book by Hawking, the movie attempts to explain things like black holes, Big Bang and other cosmology subjects to common readers. This will be the first home video release of the film on DVD and the first Errol Morris film to hit the Criterion Colection.
“Gates of Heaven”
Released in 1980, “Gates of Heaven” focuses on the pet cemetery business. This was one of Morris’ early documentaries and helped launch his career. The film tells the story of Floyd “Mac” McClure and his business offering graceful burials for pets, which ends up failing. It then moves on to the company who took over his business and created a successful enterprise. Interesting trivia about this film saw director Werner Herzog promise to eat his shoe if this documentary was successful, a request that he ended up honoring.
“The Thin Blue Line”
A lot of attention has gone to the West Memphis Three, and how two different documentaries helped free the young men that many people believed were wrongly convicted of murder. However, over two decades before the men were released, Errol Morris told the story of Randall Dale Adams, a man wrongly convicted of murder in Texas. Morris’ documentary forced a closer look at the case and Adams eventually was found not guilty of the murder. While Morris and Adams had a falling out later about who owned the rights to his story, “The Thin Blue Line” remains one of cinema’s most important documentaries, showing the true power of film.
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