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"Bloom" and "The Fog of War"
Jul. 1st, 2004 09:19 amThe Munich film festival which is going on right now isn't as famous or glamorous as the Berlinale, but I do find it to be more fun (not to mention more convenient, since I'm living in Munich). Yesterday night, I had tickets for the documentary The Fog of War (this year's Oscar winner for its category) and for Bloom, aka the brave attempt to make a film based on James Joyce' Ulysses.
I have to confess I haven't read Ulysses, save for Molly's final monologue which we did at school - I cheated and listened to the audiobook, figuring that this would make things easier on me. It did; Joyce's artistry with language and dialogue comes across not just powerful but enjoyable that way. I still wasn't tempted to read Ulysses, though; as far as novels dealing with a single day are concerned, I prefer Mrs Dalloway, or, for that matter, Michael Cunningham's The Hours. Both of which were also made into feature films in recent years. So, Bloom the film: comes across as a series of cinematic vignettes rather than a cohesive movie. I'd blame the literary source but again, any movie based on Mrs Dalloway and The Hours has a similar problem, and these two still managed to produce a narrative. Moreover, I felt like watching a puppet theatre, i.e. the actors delivering set piece after set piece, but not an ongoing performance. All of which makes for an interesting film I liked watching, but which left me emotionally cold.
Now, The Fog of War, on the other hand. Subtitled Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert Strange McNamara it's separated into chapters as well, but for some reason feels much more cohesive. Fascinating, disturbing, and easily one of the best documentaries and portraits I know, not least because filmmaker Errol Morris - who protested against the Vietnam War in his youth - doesn't attempt to put an easy label on McNamara. The man is presented with all his contradictions, and so is the portrait of the times he lived through.
Old Robert McNamara comes across as intelligent, extremely articulate, and still struggling to understand what happened. (Young McNamara, in the historic footage, feels strangely unreal in comparison, as unreal as the politicians we see today in the news.) Having met and interviewed Henry Kissinger once, I was struck by the incredible contrast in attitude. Among other things, Kissinger stunned me with declaring the Nuremberg Trials were somewhat unfair ("generals have their orders in wartime") , that they said a dangerous precedent and that the whole ICC idea could encourage "third class nations to carry out their vendettas".
In contrast, The Fog of War has McNamara pondering not "just" Vietnam but also WWII, specifically the fire bombing compaign in Japan (where he served under Curtis LeMay, who would later be one of the hawks in the Cuban Missile Crisis - McNamara's always comes accross as being between admiration and horror where LeMay is concerned). No nostalgia for "the last good war" or "the greatest generation" here - he says that if the US had lost the war, he and LeMay would have been tried and found guilty as war criminals, and he doesn't qualify this by saying "by a Japanese court". He points out that the incendiary bombs destroyed 50-90% of 68 Japanese cities before the atom bombs were used.
The word "Iraq" is never spoken, but when McNamara asserts, apropos Vietnam, that a country should never unilaterally apply military power because if it can't convince its allies to stand with it, its reasoning may be flawed, the contemporary point he makes is obvious. (And Morris has the restraint not to comment.)
All of which doesn't mean the film is a "mea culpa" by McNamara. He also states he's proud of his accomplishments, and simultanously points out that the Vietnamese couldn't see the US as anything but a colonial power (which he says he didn't understand back then), and that the US could see the situation only in the Cold War context, complete with the domino theory everyone believed in at the time. Aside from saying in between he doesn't want to discuss the crisis in his family which happened during the Johnson years, there is just one question during the entire film which he refuses to answer, and it's the last question: "Do you feel guilty or morally responsible for what happened in Vietnam?"
(Mind you, earlier, when the question was different - i.e. "Who is responsible for Vietnam?" he replies promptly and without hesitation "the President", stating that he has enormous respect for LBJ but still thinks Kennedy would have made difference and withdrawn what "advisors" were there at the time, pointing out they had already agreed on doing so. Morris uses a recorded conversation between McNamara and Johnson to back this up.)
(The most openly emotional moment for McNamara is when he talks about Kennedy's death and about picking out JFK's burial place. He has tears in his eyes, audibly chokes, and you're suddenly struck with the death of Kennedy, flattened by a thousand repetions of the Zapruder film, dozens of movies and books, both pro- and anti-Kennedy, as something that is not a historic event but a personal loss, the death of a friend. Now one might argue that if McNamara is rosy-eyed about anything in The Fog of War, it is about the Kennedys, but the sudden rawness of grief in this very self-possessed man is incredibly striking, nonethless. Back to the ending:)
"I do not want to answer this question," McNamara replies, and after two hours of replies, this refuses sets a final contradictory and yet all too human note at the end. Speaking of notes, Philipp Glass' score for this film is haunting and enormously effective.
Some reviews are here, and here.
I have to confess I haven't read Ulysses, save for Molly's final monologue which we did at school - I cheated and listened to the audiobook, figuring that this would make things easier on me. It did; Joyce's artistry with language and dialogue comes across not just powerful but enjoyable that way. I still wasn't tempted to read Ulysses, though; as far as novels dealing with a single day are concerned, I prefer Mrs Dalloway, or, for that matter, Michael Cunningham's The Hours. Both of which were also made into feature films in recent years. So, Bloom the film: comes across as a series of cinematic vignettes rather than a cohesive movie. I'd blame the literary source but again, any movie based on Mrs Dalloway and The Hours has a similar problem, and these two still managed to produce a narrative. Moreover, I felt like watching a puppet theatre, i.e. the actors delivering set piece after set piece, but not an ongoing performance. All of which makes for an interesting film I liked watching, but which left me emotionally cold.
Now, The Fog of War, on the other hand. Subtitled Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert Strange McNamara it's separated into chapters as well, but for some reason feels much more cohesive. Fascinating, disturbing, and easily one of the best documentaries and portraits I know, not least because filmmaker Errol Morris - who protested against the Vietnam War in his youth - doesn't attempt to put an easy label on McNamara. The man is presented with all his contradictions, and so is the portrait of the times he lived through.
Old Robert McNamara comes across as intelligent, extremely articulate, and still struggling to understand what happened. (Young McNamara, in the historic footage, feels strangely unreal in comparison, as unreal as the politicians we see today in the news.) Having met and interviewed Henry Kissinger once, I was struck by the incredible contrast in attitude. Among other things, Kissinger stunned me with declaring the Nuremberg Trials were somewhat unfair ("generals have their orders in wartime") , that they said a dangerous precedent and that the whole ICC idea could encourage "third class nations to carry out their vendettas".
In contrast, The Fog of War has McNamara pondering not "just" Vietnam but also WWII, specifically the fire bombing compaign in Japan (where he served under Curtis LeMay, who would later be one of the hawks in the Cuban Missile Crisis - McNamara's always comes accross as being between admiration and horror where LeMay is concerned). No nostalgia for "the last good war" or "the greatest generation" here - he says that if the US had lost the war, he and LeMay would have been tried and found guilty as war criminals, and he doesn't qualify this by saying "by a Japanese court". He points out that the incendiary bombs destroyed 50-90% of 68 Japanese cities before the atom bombs were used.
The word "Iraq" is never spoken, but when McNamara asserts, apropos Vietnam, that a country should never unilaterally apply military power because if it can't convince its allies to stand with it, its reasoning may be flawed, the contemporary point he makes is obvious. (And Morris has the restraint not to comment.)
All of which doesn't mean the film is a "mea culpa" by McNamara. He also states he's proud of his accomplishments, and simultanously points out that the Vietnamese couldn't see the US as anything but a colonial power (which he says he didn't understand back then), and that the US could see the situation only in the Cold War context, complete with the domino theory everyone believed in at the time. Aside from saying in between he doesn't want to discuss the crisis in his family which happened during the Johnson years, there is just one question during the entire film which he refuses to answer, and it's the last question: "Do you feel guilty or morally responsible for what happened in Vietnam?"
(Mind you, earlier, when the question was different - i.e. "Who is responsible for Vietnam?" he replies promptly and without hesitation "the President", stating that he has enormous respect for LBJ but still thinks Kennedy would have made difference and withdrawn what "advisors" were there at the time, pointing out they had already agreed on doing so. Morris uses a recorded conversation between McNamara and Johnson to back this up.)
(The most openly emotional moment for McNamara is when he talks about Kennedy's death and about picking out JFK's burial place. He has tears in his eyes, audibly chokes, and you're suddenly struck with the death of Kennedy, flattened by a thousand repetions of the Zapruder film, dozens of movies and books, both pro- and anti-Kennedy, as something that is not a historic event but a personal loss, the death of a friend. Now one might argue that if McNamara is rosy-eyed about anything in The Fog of War, it is about the Kennedys, but the sudden rawness of grief in this very self-possessed man is incredibly striking, nonethless. Back to the ending:)
"I do not want to answer this question," McNamara replies, and after two hours of replies, this refuses sets a final contradictory and yet all too human note at the end. Speaking of notes, Philipp Glass' score for this film is haunting and enormously effective.
Some reviews are here, and here.
