..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara
Directed by Errol Morris

For the longest time, documentaries had no style, just a generic structure and tone that reinforced the veracity of the information they imparted. Every so often, even within the confines of that format, a filmmaker would gather material so moving or intriguing that the documentary would still be highly captivating and worthwhile, but it was never slick or dazzling unless it was a musical program, which everyone knew was not really a documentary anyway. Errol Morris changed all of that, taking documentary content and accentuating it with style-eerie or oddball close-ups of interviewees, a musical score that would dominate or marshal the editing-so that he could draw a good story out of his material the way a filmmaker is supposed to, using all of the tools he has at his command instead of just cookie cutters and staplers. And finally, in 2003, Morris received an Oscar for one of his films, albeit one where he goes easy on his most radical stylistic instincts, The Fog of War, a 107-minute interview with former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, discussing McNamara's experiences in World War II, his work as an executive at the Ford Motor Company after the war, and his terms as the defense secretary under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, looking primarily at the Cuban Missile Crisis and the War in Vietnam. It ends there, for although one would think that McNamara's tenure as the president of the World Bank afterwards could have provided another movie's worth of material, it probably would be too far off the film's central theme-the psychology of conducting war-and Morris, from the looks of the deleted scenes on the Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment release (01916, $27), wasn't really prepared to explore it anyway.

McNamara is in his mid-eighties in the film, but speaks as lucidly and alertly as if he were one quarter that age. He has himself long undergone a kind of public repentance for his involvement in the wars he discusses, and one assumes that his participation in the film is an extension of that reckoning. The politics of it is somewhat unimportant, however, because in Morris' hands the movie becomes an exploration of the imperfections of wisdom, just as, in his hands, with the help of Philip Glass' musical score, it takes on a Koyaanisqatsi-like mesmerism. It is an extremely well made, captivating film, with a rich historical content to give it narrative drive and McNamara's self-awareness to give it emotional depth and complexity. It contains a wealth of ideas and counter-ideas that will stimulate the mind of each viewer, but like all the great documentaries, it also just compels you to grab something cold to drink and something to munch on, and to sit back and let it hold you in its entertaining spell.

The picture is presented in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 1.78:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. You often feel that the archival clips used to illustrate a lot of McNamara's monolog are tight on the top and bottom, but that is the nature of the theatrical format, and the shots of McNamara himself are always strikingly composed and accurately rendered. The color transfer looks fine and Glass' music is well served by the dimensionality and clarity of the 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound. The more you turn it up, the more enjoyable the movie becomes. There are optional French, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese subtitles, English captioning and a couple TV commercials.

The film is structured into eleven parts, based upon key 'lessons' that McNamara expresses in his talk. The definitions of these lessons, however, were created by Morris, so in a text segment of the DVD's supplement, McNamara, always wanting to get his story out straight, offer his own ten 'lessons,' including a couple that speak directly to the world order of 2003. There are also 38 minutes of deleted and alternate scenes, and they are a highly welcome addendum to the film. The alternate sequences were sensibly revised for the better, though the changed arrangement of the material is still interesting. The deleted segments stray too far afield to belong in the film, but include, among other things, the most tear-inducing moment in the entire DVD (McNamara's wife receives an award several weeks before she dies), an inkling of how a World Bank segment in the film would have run, humorous anecdotes about Kennedy and others, a complete presentation of the famous Johnson campaign ad that cuts from a little girl picking flowers to a nuclear bomb exploding, and many other interesting memories and reflections.

July 21, 2004

DVD Roundup: This Week's DVD Releases
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- by Douglas Pratt

Douglas Pratt's DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter is published monthly.
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