Old School Reviews: Errol Morris, Fog of War

Fog of War, The (2003)

Director: Errol Morris

Stars: Robert S. McNamara

Release Company: Sony Pictures Classics

MPAA Rating: NR

Official Site

	Web
	oldschoolreviews

Vietnam Reflections Art Print
Teter, Lee
Buy at AllPosters.com

Vilified in the 1960's when Vietnam escalated into a full blown undeclared war, Robert S. McNamara recently penned a memoir (In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam), revealing his conflicted struggles to remain loyal to the President while seeking logistical ways to extricate the United States from Vietnam. Now 85, McNamara looks back at those murky days with more clarity:

"We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why."

Realizing that not everyone reads books, McNamara agreed to film an extended interview session that recycles similar terrain. The choice of Errol Morris as the filmmaker is pretty amazing, given Morris' penchant for documenting the quirky and offbeat in films like Gates of Heaven and Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. , but Morris' gifts lie with recording subjects as they are—allowing his lingering camera to capture whatever truths his subjects are willing to divulge. Morris has dealt equally with plainly serious subjects like the Texas penal system and Stephen Hawking. This time Morris fulfills a dream of his to craft a documentary solely on the basis of a single interview, and McNamara cooperates for one of the year's most important films, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara.

Accentuated by Phillip Glass' original pulsating melancholy score, McNamara expounds on his eleven maxims while also recounting highlights from his life story—ranging from his childhood in California, to his Harvard years in business administration, to his experiences in WWII, a brief five month stint as president of the Ford Motor Company, through his tumultuous years as Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968. His thirteen year reign as president of the World Bank is barely touched upon since this holds little relevance for the documentary. Although the Vietnam material forms the central core of the documentary, the scope goes much wider.

To avoid inordinate amounts of "talking head" footage, Morris integrates archive photos, video clips, and tape recordings for visual variety. One of the most haunting images occurs as McNamara discusses his role on General Curtis Le May's team that decided to firebomb 67 Japanese cities, killing 100,000 Tokyo civilians in one night alone in 1945. Ghostly numbers appear with visuals of falling bombs while McNamara describes the horror, explaining that had the U.S. lost to Japan both Le May and he would have been found guilty of war crimes. This lesser known fire bomb campaign occurred before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but was just as devastating in human loss. McNamara expresses sadness over this and other unfortunate wartime decisions, yet offers no apology—flatly stating that "you can't change human nature."

One of his eleven lessons when heeded appropriately did save humanity from unnecessary war—“Empathize with your enemy.” McNamara and President Kennedy correctly surmised that Nikita S. Khrushchev really wanted to avert war while saving face during the Cuban missile crisis, so they ignored the Joint Chiefs of Staff's pleas for attacking Cuba and responded to the softer of Khrushchev's messages (as you can read in The Kennedy Tapes and see in Thirteen Days). Unfortunately, neither McNamara nor President Johnson empathized accurately with Vietnamese leaders to understand that the domino theory had no relevance for their specific case. McNamara poignantly realizes how far off base he was when returning to Vietnam to meet with a former adversary, and nearly coming to blows with him until realizing how different their perspectives really were.

Describing the fuzzy thinking and complexities that occur in the "fog of war," McNamara admits that mistakes are often made, and no war ever clouded conflicting issues like Vietnam. How McNamara could continue to function in his role after the assassination of Kennedy, and Johnson's wildly different world view remain a puzzle. Telling pictures contrasting the body language of both McNamara and Johnson clearly indicate that McNamara never believed in Johnson's rationale for increasing U.S. presence in Vietnam. He also seems to deeply empathize with a Quaker father who burned himself to death beneath his Pentagon office in protest of the war. Yet, McNamara continued to publicly back the President, until he left office, giving credence to his reputation as a true member of the Establishment. McNamara was even foggy whether he had left the Department of Defense on his own accord or whether he was fired, though his friend Katherine Graham wryly confirmed the latter.

History establishes what a horrendous mistake Vietnam was, with a human cost of some 58,000 American lives and over 3.4 million Vietnamese casualties. When pointedly asked whether he feels any guilt about his role in Vietnam, McNamara clams up, stating that he's already said all he's going to say about it. What becomes most clear is that leaders are often as confused as anyone about the proper course to take, and that any bravado expressed during murky times is suspect. Certainly the latest flap over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction fall into the same category, so military leaders would be wise to view McNamara looking back on his experience to gain insight for future decisions.

This Oscar nominated documentary won't rank as the most entertaining films of the year, but Morris' intense character study belongs with the year's most important films. For anyone seriously interested in mining the maze of Vietnam material for historical insights, The Fog of War is a seminal work—an intimate glimpse inside the inner circles of the government.