The man himself is both distant and frequently emotional (his voice breaks with tears several times in the course of the film), willing to examine his actions - not just in Vietnam but during World War II and the Cuban missile crisis - and stubbornly unwilling to issue a mea culpa (that itself seems both arrogant and humble). Barring the convictions people already hold about the former secretary of defense, it would be very hard to come away from the movie feeling it either fully condemns or fully exculpates McNamara. The problem with "The Fog of War" isn't one of balance. He doesn't trap McNamara in the frame and turn him into a caricature, as he did with the interviewees in pictures like "Gates of Heaven" and "The Thin Blue Line." It might have been pointless to try, since, unlike most of the people who appear in Morris' films, McNamara is used to appearing in the public eye and knows how to handle himself. "The Fog of War," which is subtitled "Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. ![]() ![]() That's why it's ironic that, of all the documentary filmmakers he should agree to sit down and be interviewed by, McNamara should give his consent to Errol Morris, whose work has always been so distanced from the people he puts on screen. Having come to the Department of Defense straight from the presidency of Ford Motor Company, McNamara was seen as treating war like a corporate enterprise, coldly detached from the human cost of his decisions. "McNamara's war," the man was the epitome of the soulless technocrat.
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