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A Wilderness Of Error: The Trials Of Jeffrey MacDonald (2012)

by Errol Morris(Favorite Author)

3.73 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1594203431 (ISBN13: 9781594203435)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Penguin Press HC

review 1: Errol Morris interviewing Rex Beaber. They're getting along well. Morris says, what about the holes in Stoeckley's memory?RB: Let me give an example. Have you seen The Sound of Music?EM: Yes, of course.RB: Just tell me, in a few sentences, what the story is?EM: Do I even remember the story? I remember Julie Andrews. I remember the Trapp Family Singers. I have a very bad memory for plot. I remember the Nazis--the Nazis figured into it. Okay, have I failed this one?RB: No. Go on, say what you can remember.EM: I remember Christopher Plummer. He referred to it as The Sound of Mucus, because he hated it, even though he starred in it.RB: I want to hear your memory of the movie, not your memory of--EM: I remember the nun singing "Climb Every Mountain." I remember Julie Andrews ru... morenning in the field.RB: Are you sure you saw it?EM: I can even remember where I saw it.RB: Come on, now. You can't even remember what the story is about.EM: No, but I can remember where I saw it.RB: I don't believe that you've seen the film. EM: Really?RB: If you saw the film, you would know what the story is about. How could you see one of the most famous films made in the twentieth century and not know the story line? Is there something wrong with you?EM: There is something wrong with me. You have no idea.RB: The point I want to suggest to you is that this film, which you saw in Technicolor, under optimal viewing circumstances...
review 2: Errol Morris reexamines the case of Jeffrey MacDonald, the Army Green Beret doctor who was at first acquitted and then later convicted of the brutal murder of his wife and two young daughters. Three things become clear after hiking through the wilderness of error: MacDonald is almost certainly innocent, MacDonald even if he were guilty (which is highly unlikely) was certainly railroaded by the government and did not receive a fair trial, and MacDonald was character-assassinated in the court of public opinion by Joe McGinniss slanderous and treacherous and, as Morris accurately characterizes it, 'colossally stupid' book on the case 'Fatal Vision'. There is no better real-life example of what we refer to as 'Kafka-esque' than this case and Errol Morris has presented us with as definitive an examination as is likely possible. Will this book have the same effect on MacDonald's case as Morris's earlier film The Thin Blue Line had for Randall Dale Adams, the figure at the center of that wilderness of error? One hopes it might. less

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