Critic Reviews

You can feel the tension as Morris untangles the trail of responsibility, drawing a thin, clear line through a real-world conspiracy that resulted in more than 4,000 kids — some no more than infants — being whisked away to facilities far removed from their parents.

The movie feels less like a prosecutorial document than an autopsy of a government's conscience, pinpointing the time of death.

Watching Errol Morris‘s urgent reminder of a documentary — possibly the most enraging film yet made by a director who’s certainly known how to illuminate infuriating topics over the past 45 years — will raise your blood pressure considerably.

The material is sobering and the mountain of evidence needs unpicking. The film-maker handles his brief with the cold, hard precision of an expert state prosecutor.

It’s a story of dehumanisation, children in cages, and the blurting, vote-craving policy-making of government by id – and it’s shattering to experience.

One wishes that space in Separated had been saved instead for real stories told by the policy’s victims, or perhaps more historical context. Nonetheless, what we glean from the totality of the interviews and research, and Morris’ well-honed style of coalescing information, is damning enough.

There’s something damning that comes through watching Separated—the idea that things happened and were allowed to happen because of ambition. To advance in their careers, people were willing to enact laws that would cause unspeakable and irreversible harm.

Despite any weaknesses, the movie still does what Morris does best. It digs deep into the details of how some terrible idea was mismanaged in execution.

While Morris’s attempt to personalise this humanitarian crisis by casting actors to play a mother and son crossing the border proves less than effective, Separated’s criticism of America’s dismissive attitude towards immigrants is sufficiently scathing.

If Separated is likely too straightforward — too much of a conventional issue documentary — to be remembered as one of Morris’s richest films, it is not as if the director has abandoned his sense of profound absurdity.