The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara

 3/4

Rated PG-13 for Images and Thematic Issues for War and Destruction

Typically, war films feature soldiers and battles.  The examples are numerous, from "Platoon" to "Saving Private Ryan," and "The Longest Day" to "Dunkirk."  Rarely, but not often, we see other perspectives.  Spy thrillers like "Black Book" and its alter-ego "Lust, Caution," romances like "Casablanca" and "Allied," to guerrilla fighting like "Ride with the Devil" and "We Were Soldiers."  The home front is touched upon in films like "Mrs. Miniver," but due to the misconception that such a setting is limited, it's not addressed frequently (although the after effects of war have been tilled in many films).  What's interesting about "The Fog of War" is that it offers a viewpoint from a unique perspective: the secretary of defense.

"The Fog of War" is a war film in the sense that it deals with war.  Both WWII and in particular Vietnam are dealt with.  McNamara was a statistician in the Air Force during WWII and served as Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson in the Cold War and Vietnam era (the latter of which earned him fierce criticism from the public and Johnson).  But acclaimed documentarian Errol Morris doesn't just give us a run down of what happened.  He gives us the man.

The subtitle of this film is "Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara" and that's how Morris tells the life of this important and controversial figure.  The film is divided into these eleven philosophies that Morris used to guide him during his life.  He explains what they are and why they caused him to act the way he did.  What we are left with at the end is an intelligent and uncommonly thoughtful man who did the best he could.  He makes no apologies for his actions, but he acknowledges with a clarity that is at times heartbreaking the price that people have paid for them.  McNamara was definitely a person for whom the end justified the means yet he clearly knows that "the end" came about via violence, death and horror.  At one point Morris asks him if he thought he would have been labeled a war criminal if the US had lost WWII, and McNamara says yes.  It's a remark that carries a lot of weight coming from him.

This is a fascinating and provocative film.  Not only do we understand US strategy in the two greatest US conflicts in the past 100 years, we get an insider's view of how they were carried out and why.  The strategy for winning the war against Japan in particular is interesting as McNamara weighs human life.  He and his contemporaries faced decisions where committing acts of war were just as terrible as not acting at all.  Listening to his thinking and reasoning provides ample room for thought.  This is definitely a movie to watch and discuss.

His time as Secretary of Defense is equally interesting.  Probably the most terrifying and perceptive material details the chaos of the Cuban Missile Crisis as three governments scrambled to avoid nuclear war.  According to McNamara it was out of sheer dumb luck that the world avoided World War Three.  Personally, he credits his belief about the necessity of empathy as to why things turned out the way they did.  But he doesn't hide the fact that had anything gone differently, we might have been studying a nuclear war in history class right after the conflict with Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan.  It's a disturbing thought.

After that came his most notorious conflict: Vietnam.  It was so complicated that even he admits that it would be impossible to explain it all.  I guess it must have been, because this material is quite confusing.  Maybe I didn't have the appropriate background knowledge, although that's hardly a defense.  It's the director's job to make sure that the audience is on the same page as he is.  It's certainly not because of McNamara, who is surprisingly candid and forthright.  The only things he will not discuss are the conflicts his job created in his family and why he didn't speak against Johnson after he was fired or quit (McNamara humorously says that he isn't sure which was the case).

As bizarre as it is to say this, but "The Fog of War" is too long.  Fascinating as this material is, there is too much of it.  It is also not organized very well.  Part of this is because of McNamara, who backs up a lot in order to set the stage for his actions and why he made them.  It's a disappointing, but perhaps unavoidable, drawback.

"The Fog of War" is a strangely intimate documentary.  Through Morris's invention he calls the Interrotron (a device that allows McNamara to be filmed head on while looking at the director...like a filmed Zoom call), the film takes the appearance of a conversation.  McNamara is talking to us.  Sure, Morris inserts some archive footage (some of which is heartbreaking) for effect and has a few different angles at which footage of McNamara is taken, but this device allows us to study the man's facial expressions and gain a more intimate understanding of the man.

Flaws and all, this is a fascinating film.  Definitely recommended.