THE FOG OF WAR
Errol Morris, USA, 2003 BBC Two: Sunday 15 May 2005 10pm-11.45pm
Oscar-winning portrait of Robert S McNamara, America's Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense, who outlines the lessons he's learned about the nature and conduct of modern war.
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Nick Fraser
Storyville Series Editor
Errol Morris' The Fog of War won the Oscar for best documentary in 2004. It starts somewhat unexpectedly with an apparently self-justifying interview with someone we can recognise as a member of the American elite. But the person in question is Robert S McNamara, and the film rapidly takes another direction.
Is there anything we can learn from waging war? Well, McNamara is an a position to tell us, because it was he who made the Vietnam War possible, by applying what he had learned as president of the Ford Motor Company to the production and deployment of hi-tech weaponry, troops etc in his stint as Kennedy and Johnson's Secretary of Defense.
Errol Morris specialises in ambiguity. It's clear that he never liked the Vietnam War, and one suspects that he doesn't approve of the current American war in Iraq. But he does like McNamara.
Does McNamara ever come clean about his own role in prosecuting the war? Does anyone ever come clean about their pasts? Be satisfied in feeling that you are in the hands of a great filmmaker at the top of his powers confronting essential issues of our time in an oblique, fascinating way.
