The Fog of War
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The Fog of War – nf – We had always wanted to see this 2003 Documentary about former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. It won an Oscar and is directed by Errol Morris who used a special technique (Michael learned about it during a documentary about documentaries) where McNamara talks to the interviewer while looking at a monitor directly under the camera that is filming him so he speaks directly into the camera. McNamara was 85 at the time of the filming and is intent on giving the story of lessons learned through his experience with the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Viet Nam War (about which we were most curious) as well as during his time as head of Ford and later the World Bank. The film was interesting, held our attention, made McNamara more likeable than we expected and showed him acknowledging he made mistakes. However at the conclusion we still didn’t really understand exactly where he felt he went wrong in Viet Nam or where he substantially disagreed with Lyndon Johnson. Political junkies will want to see this especially if you lived through this period of time. 2003
Category: 3 Stars, Documentary, War | Tags: 2000-08, Errol Morris, Oscar, Robert McNamara, The Fog of War, Viet Nam War Comment »