Widely known for chronicling disparate and eccentric personalities living on the fringes of American society, Morris chose a controversial public figure as his onscreen subject: 85-year-old Robert McNamara, former secretary of defense under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and one of the principal architects behind the Vietnam War.
Mostly focusing on his role in the Vietnam controversy through personal interviews with the now elderly, yet sharply intelligent man, the film also employs black-and white television broadcasts of a younger McNamara, skewed camera filters, battle footage from the war, crackly audiotape recordings and a recurring image (suggested several times by McNamara) of a row of collapsing dominos tumbling across a map of Asia.
Philip Glass — Morris' regular musical collaborator — elevates the provocative subject matter with a pulsating, Glass-like (what other way is there to describe it?) score, emphasizing the cyclical nature of history with striking notes of repetitious grace. It's appropriate musical accompaniment — despite the non-linearity of the film's chronology — given McNamara's constant assertions that we must learn from our mistakes as a powerful nation to obviate global nuclear holocaust in the future.
Speaking of which, McNamara and Morris never explicitly draw the obvious parallels of these historical events with the current administration's vastly contested international dealings (McNamara's interview preceded 9/11). Yet they do imply some undeniable connections, especially — and, to the filmmakers' credit, inadvertently — during the private audio tapings with the then-secretary of defense and Lyndon Johnson. On these scratchy recordings — which are dramatically subtitled onscreen next to a recording device — LBJ's cowboy inflection and pugnacious attitude towards the United States' 'Nam involvement eerily mirror many of Dubya's own statements.
Nevertheless, in the interest of assessing "The Fog of War's" relative merits — and to avoid inspiring any reactionary Viewpoints from campus liberals and conservatives alike — I will henceforth leave the political content for the history and political science majors to debate and mull over, and instead stick to the information presented in the film.
Based on the filmmaking and surface arrangement, the film's ideological agenda seems clear enough: Structured (via title cards) around 11 lessons the aging politico gleaned from his life in public service, the film gravitates between McNamara's current reflections on the events he participated in during the 1960s and archival montages from the epochs in question, a period spanning the end of World War I until the tail-end of the 1960s, following the lifelong politician's (forced?) resignation from the White House.
Thankfully, McNamara isn't overly didactic when recounting his many experiences and their far-reaching "lessons," nor does his director imbue him with fawning import and sincerity. During unblinkingly candid conversations with Morris, he deeply regrets many of the flawed decisions he made during the era, and while he doesn't atone for his mistakes or ask for forgiveness, McNamara insists his recollections' significance should and will speak for itself.
What distracts from that level of viewer commiseration (or edification) is the inconsistent manner that McNamara portrays himself in, which affects Morris' approach and presentation of those 11 lessons his subject so vehemently extols. He includes footage taken from the 1990s of McNamara meeting leaders in Vietnam, and he genuinely admits to the mistakes he made while handling the situation with Johnson (mainly his decision to remain publicly mum about the hellish conditions and odds U.S. soldiers faced), but Morris never presses him to accept responsibility for these actions.
Ironically, when the director flatly asks (or rather shouts from behind his camera) if he feels any accountability for the Vietnam debacle, McNamara falls back on lesson 10 — "Never say never" — a method he used during his White House tenure to "answer the question that should have been asked of you" in lieu of directly responding to journalists' queries.
It is apparent that he feels remorseful and is attempting to inform newer generations about the "fallibility of man" in relation to violence and the inherent complexity of war. As a person, however, we never arrive at a total understanding of McNamara: The ambiguity that pervades his questionable reputation muddles the affirmations he readily gives in the film.
McNamara proclaims a lot of people think him to be an S.O.B. in the film's final moments, and, unfortunately, we are left with little reason to think otherwise.