Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus make the painstaking work of investigative reporting absorbing, using Seymour Hersh’s archive and difficult presence to good effect. Their admiration is earned, though the questions about his own methods deserve more time.
Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus make Cover-Up a compelling account of investigative journalism, with an awkward interview subject usefully close at hand. Seymour Hersh has made a profession of asking questions that powerful people would rather leave unanswered. The directors want him to explain how that work gets done, including what happens between a source speaking and a story reaching the public. The film earns its admiration for him, though it does not press every difficult question as far as it should.
The notebooks and reporting materials matter as much as the interview. Editors Peter Bowman, Amy Foote and Laura Poitras bring them together with archival footage at a pace that makes following the evidence feel like active work. We are asked to keep up, and generally that is a pleasure: the materials give us something to examine beyond the journalist’s recollection of his achievements. Occasionally the cutting gives us too little time to absorb one piece of material before moving on to the next.
Mia Cioffi Henry’s cinematography is most useful in the interviews, where our attention stays on the man trying to decide how much to say. His reluctance to explain everything gives these encounters an edge that a straightforward celebration would lack. There is pleasure in watching someone who knows the uses of a question recognise one being put to him. The directors also let his personality remain difficult, without constantly smoothing over his resistance to being questioned.
The reporting on My Lai explains why his stubbornness matters, tracing an investigation pursued despite official resistance. We were horrified by the first-person testimony about Abu Ghraib. Placing such testimony alongside the reporting keeps our attention on the people affected, rather than merely on the journalist who got the story. Maya Shenfeld’s music is less memorable than those voices, which is a reasonable outcome in a film with this much to hear.
The difficulty comes when the questions turn towards his own working methods. Protecting an anonymous source is an intelligible obligation, but it cannot make every question about verification improper. The exchanges around his notebooks bring that problem into view, and the film becomes more interesting whenever Laura Poitras challenges him. It then seems reluctant to stay with the discomfort for long enough. We would welcome a fuller explanation of how he checks what confidential sources tell him, without needing their names disclosed.
That matters because this kind of documentary can so easily turn a working life into a procession of vindications. Here the materials and the interviewing usually resist that habit, showing enough of the labour to make admiration feel earned. The nostalgic appeal is understandable, but the film is strongest when it shows the practical difficulties of finding evidence and persuading people to speak. At 117 minutes, there is room for more of that scrutiny.
This is worth an evening for anyone interested in how a story gets past the people determined to stop it. Allow some patience for the crowded archive, and do not expect every dispute about methods to be settled. We would have welcomed a few more awkward minutes with those notebooks.
