Product Description

The story of America as seen through the eyes of former secretary of defense, Robert McNamara. One of the most controversial and influential figures in world politics, he takes us on an insider's journey through many of the seminal events of the 20th century.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4134 in DVD
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 2004-05-11
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish, French, Portuguese, Japanese
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 95 minutes

Amazon.com
The Fog of War, the movie that finally won Errol Morris the best documentary Oscar, is a spellbinder. Morris interviews Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and finds a uniquely unsettling viewpoint on much of 20th-century American history. Employing a ton of archival material, including LBJ's fascinating taped conversations from the Oval Office, Morris probes the reasons behind the U.S. commitment to the Vietnam War--and finds a depressingly inconsistent policy. McNamara himself emerges as--well, not exactly apologetic, but clearly haunted by the what-ifs of Vietnam. He also mulls the bombing of Japan in World War II and the Cuban Missile Crisis, raising more questions than he answers. The Fog of War has the usual inexorable Morris momentum, aided by an uneasy Philip Glass score. This movie provides a glimpse inside government. It also encourages skepticism about same. --Robert Horton

DVD features
The Fog of War DVD piles on 24 additional scenes (38 minutes total). They're short and random, but those interested in the film will find it worthwhile to hear McNamara discuss what it was like to work with JFK and who he feels was ultimately responsible for Vietnam. There's also a text-only list entitled "Robert S. McNamara's 10 Lessons," which he introduces by saying that the 11 lessons in the movie were not his own. Some of them, however, are not that different (movie lesson no. 1: "Empathize with your enemy." McNamara lesson no. 9: "If we are to deal effectively with terrorists around the globe, we must develop a sense of empathy--I don't mean 'sympathy,' but rather 'understanding'--to counter their attacks on us and the Western world."). --David Horiuchi

Customer Reviews

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" ) draws us into what? War? Peace? Honor? Life? Power? Evil?

Born 85 years ago, McNamara is the quintessential man of his time, what Brokaw called the greatest generation, a sobriquet this documentary underscores. In McNamara's words he deplored the sorrow and pity of the four great wars of his lifetime; the trenches in France; the nuclear and indiscriminate firebombing of innocent Japanese; the debacle in Korea; the flaming jungles of Vietnam. His command of statistics is breathtaking. But it is the eyes that reveal an inner truth, the precise opposite of his concise, rational words - his 11 "lessons". We see a man who never found himself in harm's way. We see eyes so ironically blinded by a circa 1918 vision of duty and honor that, though he loathed the horrifics of Vietnam, he was compelled to allow his true judgment to go unexpressed until nearly 60,000 Americans were dead. He was at once perhaps the most powerful man in the world and its most despicable. It is easy to see why a brilliant young President Kennedy would choose someone as Defense Secretary who seemed so like himself, but tragically without the courage. And why, with Kennedy's death, McNamara by sheer ambition and brilliance would ascend to the very pinnacle of power.

Yet, I couldn't hate this guy. Perhaps the most telling moment is McNamara's clear devastation at Kennedy's assassination 41 years ago, again told in his eyes and a rare, emotional choking voice. So it's difficult to blame him for all those deaths he might have prevented -- McNamara genuinely believed he was doing the right thing for his Presidents: through an obsessive sense of duty and loyalty. Now that his day of legacy approaches, he expresses criticism over the actions of others -- General LeMay and President Johnson are the favored targets. But McNamara cannot quite bring himself to admit his own mistakes of enormous proportions. Yet it's quite clear that he was one of only two men who could have ended the 7-year slaughter (of his term in office). Many may find that failure a reason to despise the man. I found it just human.

This film offers up no easy answers (certainly not his 11 "lessons'), but more importantly raises many fundamental questions. Philip Glass' elegiac, edgy scoring perfectly meshes with this thriller. An impressive and important contribution to understanding our nation's ambivalent past.

Brilliant insights
Errol Morris's stunning documentary is about one of the 20th century's most significant players: Robert McNamara, who reprises the highlights of his life and professional career. The movie covers a lot of ground, including McNamara's stint as a Ford Motor Co. executive, his participation as a war planner in World War II, and his crucial involvement as secretary of defense under President John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and under Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson during the Vietnam War. There are some stunning revelations, including his role in the firebombing of Japan, as well as the nuclear face-off between the United States and Cuba. This is another brilliant coup for Morris, the inspired documentarian who has made a career out of conversations with the most fascinating subjects. He tells a story that knocks you right off your feet.

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 private matters.

Watch his eyes. Watch how hard it is for him to do what he feels so strongly compelled to do: somehow add meaning to his experiences by teaching us. The pain his eyes express sometimes is at once awful and compelling.

I don't think he made this movie to earn absolution. He's the kind of guy who would claim absolution as a matter of right.

No, he wants us to learn, and to enable that by as much lucidity and honesty as he can muster. Most leaders don't care enough about us to take this effort.

As much as a reasonable person could hate McNamara, I thank him for trying to teach us. It's like hearing someone already in hell trying to offer a word of warning.