![]() He discusses a moment during the Cuban Missile Crisis when he and Kennedy were trying to keep the United States out of war, but General Curtis LeMay wanted to invade Cuba. McNamara repeats this sentence several times throughout the documentary. Over the course of the documentary, Morris distills McNamara's philosophy of war into eleven basic tenets: Morris is uncanny in his ability to bring life to the abstract, and here he uses graphics, charts, moving titles and visual effects in counterpoint to what McNamara is saying.". Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote: "Although McNamara is photographed through the Interrotron, the movie is far from offering only a talking head. On Metacritic, the film has a score of 87 out of 100, based on 36 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, it has an approval rating of 96%, based on 142 reviews, and an average rating of 8.32/10 the website's critical consensus states: " The Fog of War draws on decades of bitter experience to offer a piercing perspective on the Cold War from one of its major architects". Use of this device is intended to approximate an actual interaction between the two, while encouraging the subject to make direct eye contact with the camera and, therefore, the audience. invasion of Iraq, McNamara refused, arguing that ex-secretaries of defense must not comment upon the policies of the incumbent defense secretary, though he did suggest other people could apply the lessons to the war in Iraq, as they are about war in general, not a specific war.įor his interviews with McNamara, Morris used a special device he had developed called the " Interrotron", which projects images of interviewer and interviewee on two-way mirrors in front of their respective cameras so each appears to be talking directly to the other. ![]() When asked to apply the lessons from In Retrospect to the U.S. Berkeley, McNamara disagreed with the interpretations of his lessons that Morris used in The Fog of War, and he later provided ten new lessons for a special feature on the DVD release of the film. Morris initially approached McNamara about an interview for an hour-long television special, but, after the interview was extended multiple times, he decided to make a feature film instead ultimately, Morris interviewed McNamara for some twenty hours. Berkeley, Errol Morris said the documentary had its origins in his interest in McNamara's 2001 book, Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century (written with James G. At some points, McNamara speaks openly and critically about the actions of himself and others, while, at others, he is somewhat defensive and withholding. As Secretary of Defense, McNamara was a controversial figure, and in the film he discusses, in particular, his involvement in the Cuban Missile Crisis and the escalation of the Vietnam War. Kennedy, a role he continued to hold, until 1968, under President Lyndon Johnson. After the war, McNamara was one of the Whiz Kids at Ford Motor Company, of which he was briefly president before he left to become Secretary of Defense for newly-elected President John F. During World War II, he served as an officer in the Army Air Forces under General Curtis LeMay, who was later Chief of Staff of the Air Force while McNamara was Secretary of Defense. ![]() Coming from humble origins, he graduated from University of California, Berkeley, where he met his first wife, Margaret Craig McNamara, and Harvard Business School, where he went on to teach. It is divided into eleven sections based upon "lessons" Morris derived from his interviews with McNamara, as well as the eleven lessons presented at the end of McNamara's 1995 book, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (written with Brian VanDeMark).īorn in San Francisco during World War I, McNamara says his earliest memory is of American troops returning from Europe. Composed of archival footage, recordings from the 1960s of conversations of the United States Cabinet, and new interviews with former- Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, The Fog of War depicts McNamara's life, as seen from his perspective as an eighty-five-year-old man.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |