The Fog of War | Review

Professor McNamara gives a lesson on the rules of engagement.

If you are among the millions of people wondering about how a monkey politician got the keys to Washington’s White House and became the most powerful man of the Western world then I guess by telling you that he wasn’t the first and won’t be the last shouldn’t come as a total shock. History has a tendency of repeating itself, perhaps evolution of human mind can be applauded for creating our current high-tech society but why are there still wars, poverty and disease? Mistakes happen, unfortunately for some most of humanity, it happens in a series of multiples. The Fog of War explores the “what if” question and the mistake theory along with a lifetime of knowledge and reflection gets placed front row and center with one of the most controversial figures to come out of the Vietnam War.

If the name of Robert S. McNamara doesn’t ring a bell, (I was born in 74’) it shouldn’t deter you from seeing this stimulatingly fascinating and thought-provoking documentary about one man’s journey from the tumultuous and glorious moments in Americana, to the pressure-cooker 13 day marathon chess match of Cold War with the Cuban Missile Crisis to the biggest public relations disaster in the most recent history of the U.S with the ugliness of a war for no reason in Vietnam. This 85 year-old historian who served as minister secretary of defense during the President Kennedy and President Johnson administrations provides an open door account and reflection about the right strategies and the absolutely wrong tactics that occurred during his stay. You’d think that the aftermath of it all would make this man who is willing to share and account for his mistakes make him lose some sleep or feel more accountable, but though he regrets some choices he pretty much convinces some viewers or perhaps himself that in his shoes we might not have been much better.

Morris poses the right questions and fills up the voids in his familiar style digging into a chest of black and white and napalm red war footage and into McNamara documentations. The recordings between conversations between the subject and the two presidents are always salient stuff and his documentary style technique that sees him play with a game of dominos across a map of Asia serves as a metaphoric cue. Broken down into 11 chaptered open lesson from McNamara, he narrates his own story but this doesn’t mean that he is open about discussing all as is later noticed when Morris probes him unmercifully in the film’s closing stage. While Bowling for Columbine is the fast-food version on the subject about conflicts between people that lead to resolutions with bullets and atomic bombs, this film builds a tension by showing how a strategies-by-the-numbers helps in public car safety and then gets applied to crunch time war tactics and winning the battle, or losing it without war. One important lesson that is taught in this film is to always put yourself in the shoes of your enemy, here and in the his other documentary films Morris seems to do just that and better as he gains incredible insight into the minds of his subjects and the results is the absolute best, such as in his 1988 doc called The Thin Blue Line.

Rating 4 stars