cherold Review of The Fog of War

The Fog of War (2003)

a sort of grunt's-eye view of history

[8/10 · 27 November 2004]

This is an interesting documentary precisely because it makes so little effort to put McNamara's actions in a larger historical context. We catch glimpses of the world's opinion of McNamara in MTV-fast clips from newspapers, but mainly this is McNamara in his own words. He is thoughtful and quite bright, but even though he was an architect of a war, in a way his is the soldier's view of battle. In a way the soldier only sees a portion of the battle, McNamara gives us a very specific view of history. He is an intriguing character, interested in the complexities and ambiguities of action, admitting at one point that he could be realistically considered a war criminal but often skirting responsibility for his decisions. He comes across not as duplicitous but as simply limited to a view of the world informed by his particular place in it, which is true of most of us. A documentary about McNamara could have shown other viewpoints and given a very different perspective on the man, but it's fascinating to just hear this one intelligent if biased perspective.

Morris does a better job than usual of staying out of his own film's way. I have always found him intolerably gimmicky, but here his restless editing actually works, and for once I even like a Philip Glass score, which helps the film sustain its melancholy tone. This is not to say that I didn't get sick of his endless slow motion shots of historical incidents or didn't wish he would display press clippings at a speed where I could actually read them all, but overall the film is very effective.