Review of Fog of War Movie by Errol Morris - Essay Example

When we saw the movie, we draw some very sound conclusions regarding McNamara’s body language. We see a man admitting his sheer blunders regarding the important political decisions whose repercussions ranged from Vietnam to Japan, causing thousands of deaths and saving the world from annihilation by nuclear war by sheer luck, not because of intelligence information.

The people would agree that the crimes he committed are completely unforgiving and unforgettable. His decisions regarding life and death are themselves a depiction of painful humility for him as depicted in the documentary. Although McNamara admits that he has been wrong concerning Vietnam War and could have done more to redirect the decision of the president’s office, he does not say sorry although Morris tried to prompt him. This shows his stubbornness and pride in himself.

On one side, he seems to be regretful but on the other side; he is justifying the decisions which caused the mammoth human loss. The movie comes up with eleven lessons learned from the life of McNamara. But the one lesson seems to be very inappropriate i.e. to do something good, you may have to engage in evil. This statement comes up as the justification for McNamara for his horrendous decisions in the cruise missile conflict, and Vietnam and Japan wars but history vehemently reveals that nothing good came out after engaging in evil in the case of McNamara.

In the movie, many times it appears that Morris as a director is trying to symbolize one life of McNamara to illustrate the other as an active and passive actor of history where he has participated in the war as a witness and an actor too. Morris has tried to illustrate the overall psychology of McNamara by probing his consciousness time after time and has tried to describe the overall guilt of the nation hidden under the cloak of innocence. The acceptance of McNamara that human judgment can be mistaken shows an apologetic tone and a sense of pursuing a nation with bloody stains on the American legacy.

Morris as a director has been very successful in highlighting the consciousness of McNamara as a Secretary of Defense of the world superpower. It describes that political decisions are influenced by human weaknesses but they can have a long-term impact on the conscious of the whole nation.