Unlike most other documentary interviews I've seen, I found this interesting and even satisfying to watch. However, after reading what Wikipedia has to say about the Vietnam War, and skimming the six pages of McNamara's obituary in the NY Times, I can't say I'm greatly the wiser about what McNamara's personal responsibility might have been. Why was it called McNamara's War by Senator Morse ? It seems to me, whatever McNamara's role, that the buck stopped with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. It was America's war and the Presidents' war. McNamara must have done his best to serve them, and I can't see why he should bear the blame for what must be reckoned their policies. Did he hide the futility of the war from these presidents ? I'm thinking he deserves a medal for guts and stamina, fighting against the odds until his death at 93.

The Fog of War is a great documentary because it has an intelligent subject and a wise filmmaker, who fearlessly tackles subjects that come stockpiled with burning questions. Director Errol Morris knows how to gear a discussion where he wants it to go, and utilizes the "Interrotron," which Wikipedia states is Morris' device where, "the image of each person's face is then projected onto a two-way mirror positioned in front of the lens of the other's camera. Instead of looking at a blank lens, then, both Morris and his subject are looking directly at a human face." In return, we get lively, crystal-clear picture quality and the subject often locks eyes with the audience members, showing a very personal relationship for the material at hand.The subject of the film is Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense during the Kennedy administration and such events as the Bay of Pigs, the Tokyo bombing, and the Vietnam War. Basically, you can say McNamara was in charge of Defense during some of America's most trying, nerve-wracking times. Uncertainty plagued all officials, frustration loomed from world leaders, issues like Vietnam and civil rights left American citizens more divided than ever, and America seemed to be steered towards the calamity of nuclear war.McNamara and Kennedy were on the frontlines of political danger. McNamara recalls long, sometimes sleepless nights due to stress and indecisiveness on how to approach the war. He even states how meeting with world leaders was a strange process. At one point, it was said that Fidel Castro accepted the fact that the population of his country may plummet because of this war. It was as if he accepted that Cuba could be destroyed over this war. It is when McNamara discusses the bombing in Tokyo that killed thousands that it would be justifiable to try him and numerous other officials as war criminals.Having McNamara discuss the interworkings of his job and the stress and backlash every decision he made came with offers an emotional core to the film. I have a feeling the emotional relevance of documentaries is an unnoticed addition, but when it comes to down it, what you're hearing is a man who was criticized heavily during his days in office and now finally has the courage to speak for an extensive amount of time, in front of a camera, about his experiences as the Secretary of Defense. McNamara often tears up during the film, and this only adds to the idea he wants us to take away, which is the men behind these serious operations are indeed human.Furthermore, McNamara is an electric screen presence to say the least. In the film, he teaches us "lessons," eleven to be exact. They are short, concise sentences that help us understand the circumstances of war and the thought-process that guided him through the dark days of his time in office. Occasionally swayed on-topic by Morris, or directed by a strong question, McNamara speaks with the voice of a leader, rarely pauses, and always seems to have a response loaded up and ready to go. Late in the film, he states he answers every question he is asked with the answer to the question he wish was asked. Perhaps this justifies his quick-wit and immediate responses to every question.The strongest metaphor in the film involves a large array of dominoes scattered across a flat map. In slow-motion, Morris shows the collapsing dominoes with a beautiful blur-effect and thunderous sound. At the end, we see a slow-motion shot of the dominoes aligning back upwards to only be knocked down again sometime in the near future.The concluding points of The Fog of War are as followed: one is that politicians and political officials are human and aren't even totally sure of the moves they make. The second is that the idea of "the fog of war" is a real thing. It's the figurative mental cloud during a treacherous time that fogs your judgment and makes decision-making a hairy, difficult process. By the end of the film, McNamara clearly wants to finish talking. We can hear Morris ask trying questions such as the value and the gain of the Vietnam War on America's part and his personal opinion. McNamara ends the show by informing that he fears backlash if he were to answer these questions from either standpoint.Starring: Robert McNamara. Directed by: Errol Morris.

I can't remember when I last saw anything as chilling as this great documentary... maybe the original 1988 version of The Vanishing, which equally left one profoundly disturbed at how studied and artful yet gratuitous and without any ultimate meaning or purpose the genesis of certain evil is.The lifetime analytical/"intellectual" opus of McNamara, on behalf of the US government, as portrayed in the records shown on the Fog of War, is eerily reminiscent of those obsessive Nazi written orders and documents that we see in WW2 documentaries. Everything counted and tabulated, percentualised and extrapolated. Such infinite trouble and such enormous pains taken, such an exemplary work ethic shown, such savage analysis and documentation undertaken... and all for what, other than the pursuit of goals actually lying between pure amorality and utter immorality?It's understandable and thereby tolerable that one - nation state or individual - should fall into unforgivable amorality or immorality by default, by sloth, out of disorganisation, cluelessness or personal weakness. But to somehow achieve as output an utter darkness of spirit after such effort, study and personal severity is devastatingly eerie, perverse and perplexing.McNamara does have a momentary tear in his eye as he recounts his decades of power across several utterly brutal wars, and it is for Jack Kennedy and his final Arlington resting place. Ultimately, he can be summed up via the school-captain smirk he wears standing next to Kennedy as he announces his appointment as Secretary of State in 1961. Power for the sake of power, success for the sake of success, any claims made to morality and right as meaningless as they are irrelevant. The man a perfect reflection of his country post war. Macchiavelli would consider himself surpassed.These are conclusions that someone, ethically sensitive but not at all prejudiced here (indeed barely knowing anything about this man), can reach here just by viewing what is effectively a documentary self-portrait. Director Errol Morris' genius consists in having allowed McNamara to reveal himself so eerily and damningly even while being given free use of a stage to lay out a grand sophistry of reflections, rationalizations and truisms to justify or expiate his lifetime's work.Quite an unforgettable experience, and multiply so because so unexpectedly and improbably given the self-portrait format. Phillip Glass' own genius should be acknowledged, as well as Morris' brilliance in exploiting it in The Fog of War, with eerie minimalism the perfect soundtrack here as in The Thin Blue Line 15 years earlier.We may not quite have plumbed the depths of gut-emptying futility and Shakespearean despair with this documentary X-Ray of McNamara, but we are close. I can only think of Henry Kissinger, Richard Perle and a few of the latter's soul mates as subjects that could supply an even more devastating moral experience and take us to rock bottom itself.

I am hoping that the death of Robert McNamara today will motivate more people to see this film. It changed my view of the man, and of history, and I am more than a little shocked at those who say it had no effect on them whatsoever.The "eleven lessons" of which some are complaining, in my opinion, are a mechanism to provide structure to the film, and to move from topic to topic. They prevent the film from being 90 uninterrupted minutes of "talking head", and (again IMO) are not really the point of the film in and of themselves. There's no quiz at the end; you have missed it, somehow.If you think of McNamara's brilliance as a tool to be used to achieve some end, it boggles the mind how many different and better ways history could have turned out. JFK had the right instinct to hire this brilliant man (and he didn't even seem to care for which post); Johnson made the mistake of not listening to him, and instead turning that brilliance to the task of tilting at a really big windmill. McNamara's willingness to do his regular level best in pursuit of a policy that even he thought was wrong -- well, there's the real tragedy.The "what if" games you can play with this are endless. If McNamara had stayed at Ford, then a lesser man would have done a poorer job at pressing a bad policy (thus ending the war earlier), and we'd probably all have 100mpg (or flying) cars by now.Left, right, or center -- this is a "must see" film. Think what you will of McNamara (and you will), but I don't think one person in a million would give us such an unblinking view of his own life's events; everyone should admire at least that much about the man.