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The Fog of War
(2003)
Dir: Errol Morris
Before watching The Fog of War, I could count on my penis all the things I knew about Robert S. McNamara--that’s an unimaginative way of saying I only knew his name because I was always drowsy in history class. Now I know that he was the incendiary brain bug who strategized the Vietnam war for the U.S. government. And that his middle name is “Strange.” Indeed. I also know that Kennedy appointed him Secretary of Defense. And that despite his ability to hardheartedly assign bombing targets and order invasions (Cuba), he is an emotional chap. Prone to choking up when discussing JFK and his own family. I’m surprised I remember all of this, because I find Morris’ documentaries rather difficult to glean information from. Not to sat that they aren’t full of facts and figures. It’s just that his hypnotic editing and all that Phillip Glass soundscaping puts me into a lucid half-nap every time. You know those dreams that bubble up just before you doze all the way off. The ones where you’re falling out of a plane or off a cliff only to jerk violently awake, knocking a glass of vodka off the nightstand, milliseconds before you smack the ground? That’s Errol Morris. I’ve dozed off during every one of his films. I remember snapping out of a quick slumber during Fast, Cheap and Out of Control, and thinking that I was watching PBS. The producers were blind on Thunderbird and White-Out fumes, splicing random tapes and spinning giggly 360‘s in their swivel chairs. It was intense. And the compelling subject matter of Morris’ films always reel me back in. Watching The Fog, I drank silly coffee after my first nod, and it helped. The film is broken down into eleven lessons. Each segment serves as an opportunity for McNamara to reflect upon what he was doing, and what the fuck he as thinking, during different parts of his life. From his childhood, to his time spent at Harvard, to squirming around the repercussions of the Vietnam War, it’s all included. The movie is directly chilling because of the gravity of its subject, and his niche in history. What’s subversively alarming is that despite his ability to coldly calculate the benefits of slaughtering civilian populations, he is still an intelligent, somewhat feeling human being. He lived a fairly a pedestrian life before World War II. It’s always easy to call someone an animal. Especially a historical figure with so much blood on his hands. But easy is for pussies. What’s hard is trying to imagine yourself in his position. How would your level of humanity hold up if the arc of your life matched his. Would you have made better decisions? Would you have done the “right” thing? Wake up asshole, I’m talking to you.
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