The Fog of War [HD]

A Giant, Startling Vision
This brilliant work by director Morris is the stuff of life. And death. It arouses the most basic moral and immoral questions of being human through an enormously complex and yet simple man, Robert Strange McNamara. It seems no coincidence, his middle name, as we get to know him in all his cleverness and contradictions. Morris subtly illuminates, literally through McNamara's eyes, what it means to have power over life and death. Like God. There is something almost spiritual in McNamara's eyes, edited against searing images of, well, graphs, statistics, memoranda, bursting firebombs and nuclear mushrooms, almost all rarely seen-before footage. The eyes are the soul of this film - McNamara's are a combination of supreme confidence and extreme doubt. But not only his eyes - for example, we see President Kennedy's eyes frozen in the lens as he tells the nation of imminent nuclear war in 1962, a look that would make a Marine shiver. This new interview technique ("interrotron" )...

All eleven lessons are extremely important to us all.
Errol Morris did his homework for this movie. 20 hours of film and tape. The music by Philip Glass is outstanding. The film, the interaction in the first person, the archival footage, some in three dimensions are mind boggling. The music is very unique and original. The messages are clear. In war the human mind cannot comprehend the complexities. "How much evil must we do, to do good?" Having assisted in the production of the film, I know how hard everyone worked to make this unforgetable film. It should be required viewing for all military and flag officer candidates as well as all presidential candidates. SEE IT. It is worth every minute. Even if you are too young to remember Vietnam. Even if you served in Vietnam and hate Mr. McNamara. You need to see this important film.

It's His Eyes
You end up watching this man, a "talking head," for so long. While there are a handful of shots of him driving what looks like a Ford Taurus past the Pentagon and a number of other government landmarks, almost all footage showing a contemporary Robert McNamara seems to be a single-camera setup.

He is trying to be honest, but does not promise to be self-revelatory. Others here speculate that it is his shot at redemption. If you know his work at Ford, you know that he's not really a redemption kind of guy. Rather, he's more a scientist or engineer. He want's to contribute to a growing body of knowledge. He's [obviously] not afraid to make mistakes, so long as they are cataloged and recorded.

So long as we all learn from them.

That's why he made this film. There are moments of emotion - for example, when he talks about John Kennedy's death. But it's not a confessional. He says more than once, "I'm not going to go into this," because it relates to...

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