The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003)

A Documentary Directed by Errol Morris

Last night before putting a DVD into the player, I happened to flip onto "The Daily Show" when John Stewart was showing clips of Donald Rumsfeld's confrontation with Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst-turned White House critic. One could be tempted to think that Rumsfeld is the most controversial Secretary of Defense in American history. What would I give to find out, say twenty years from now after all the dust has settled from the political battlefield, what he really thought during his tenure in the Bush Administration and what conclusion he will have drawn from the decision he made then.

It just so happened that the next film in my Netflix queue was The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara.

Robert McNamara was Kennedy's Secretary of Defense, under whose watch the US entered the Vietnam War, and overseeing the Pentagon into Johnson's Administration, some in the contemporary press apparently called Vietnam, "McNamara's War."

Besides his unique perspective as the architect of the Vietnam war, McNamara's work as an analyst during World War II, his position as the president of Ford Motor Company, his presence in the Oval Office with John and Bobby Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis and his term as president of the World Bank make him an intriguing subject of Errol Morris's documentary and offers a window into the major events of the mid-twentieth century.

"In my seven years as Secretary," he says in the film, "We came within a hair's breadth of war with the Soviet Union on three different occasions! Twenty-four hours a day, three-hundred sixty-five days a year, for seven years as Secretary of Defense, I lived the Cold War! "

In a sense, McNamara was almost a real-life Forrest Gump. Of course, it wasn't dumb luck that got him involved in some of the most crucial events of the 20th Century. He was a highly intelligent, Berkeley- and Harvard-educated Forrest Gump, who earned his way into every position that he had. Despite his qualifications, it is staggering how one person can influence so much of the world's history. For crying out loud, he is responsible for putting seat belts in cars! Seat belts! How much more integral can you be. And for his contributions to the Ford Motor Company, he became the first president of the company whose last name wasn't Ford. But that was a short-lived position, coming only a few months before he got a call from John F. Kennedy.

During the film's interviews, describes his experiences as an analyst for General Curtis LeMay, who designed and implemented the bombing strategy of Japan during WWII, his time at Ford and his return to government service as the secretary of defense during the Vietnam era.

The archival clips of him during Kennedy's Administration reveals a person at least as arrogant as Donald Rumsfeld (to his credit, though, I think Rumsfeld has mellowed out in the last few years).

Although McNamara raises many moral issues regarding war and government included with his "11 lessons," his conclusions -- if you can call them that -- are intriguing but don't seem very substantial.

For example, in regard to the firebombing of Tokyo that killed over 100,000 civilians in one hight, he offers one of his 11 lessons is "Proportionality should be a guideline for war." But he never really addresses in proportion to what. The Japanese had raped and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians throughout Asia. That he doesn't mention this doesn't give us context to the moral question which he brings up but just leaves us hanging. What would have proportionality looked like?

He says, "LeMay said if we lost the war that we would have all been prosecuted as war criminals. And I think he's right. He . . . and I'd say I . . . were behaving as war criminals. " The truth is they would have been killed just as many American, British and Australian POWs were. Many Japanese leaders were in fact tried and convicted as war criminals. In a sense, LeMay and McNamara were waging war proportionally.

He continues to grieve the injustice of the Vietnam War as if he were criticizing someone else's judgment leading Morris has to ask him, quite a few times, if he takes responsibility for those decisions. He passed some of them on, perhaps fairly, to Lyndon Johnson but we are left wondering what his responsibility was as secretary of defense.

What is frustrating is that McNamara never really defends his decisions. Nor does offer alternatives. He only offers vague platitudes like "Proportionality should be a guideline for war" that no one can really disagree with but really don't mean anything either. He can't seem to make a firm stand on anything and seems to mistake his wishy-washy answers for wisdom. The result is that his confessions seem to be nothing more than self-flagellation.

I know the questions he is dealing with are difficult. In response to certain questions about Vietnam, he responds that they are so complex and difficult to answer that he's damned if he answers them and damned if he doesn't and he'd rather be damned for not answering them. Fair enough. But questions like these do not go away, and future policy makers need the wisdom of people who have faced them before. In other words, people like McNamara.

I don't know if Morris views his film as a serious work of policy or as a portrait of a man who is haunted by the difficult decisions he has made in his early life. If it is the latter, he was quite successful. If it's the former, I don't think he's a very deep thinker.

In terms of the technical aspects of the film itself, I think the visuals were beautiful. The pieces of the film that were shot by Morris himself -- as opposed to the archival footage -- to fill the screen during the voice overs were very creatively done, almost to the point of distraction. Combined with Philip Glass's original score make this film a work of art. (Interestingly, I had pretty much only known Philip Glass for South Park minimalist "Holiday" musical).

Gunner Palace (2004)

A documentary directed by Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein

Since I haven't posted anything for a long time, I am going to put up an article that was published in an abridged form in the San Francisco Observer.

Here it is in it's entirety:

A Filmmaker on the Frontline
By Alex Selim

When Michael Tucker arrived in Baghdad with a camera in May of 2003, he wanted capture the chaos and danger that American soldiers faced in the months after “major combat operations” had ceased in Iraq.

After spending two months in-country with the 2/3 Field Artillery, a.k.a. “The Gunners,” who were stationed in a bombed-out palace, he produced “Gunner Palace,” a documentary that will be released nationwide on March 3 [2005].

“I wanted to see how [the troops] were coping,” he said in a question and answer session at a screening in the Embarcadero Theater on January 27.

“Gunner Palace” portrays the war from the soldier’s perspective, following them through the banalities of war as they police the streets, teach their translator how to flirt and have a pool party in their home, a former pleasure palace built for Uday Hussein after the first Gulf War.

It also depicts the war’s intensity as they raid the houses of suspected insurgents and patrol the streets of Adhamiya, a hostile neighborhood of Baghdad where every plastic bag left on the street could contain an improvised explosive device.

Tucker, who was born in Hawaii but is now based in Germany, wanted an accurate representation of the war without the filter of the evening news or the inevitable Hollywood makeover but didn’t want to make an overt political statement.

“I’m suspicious about films influencing elections,” he said in response to a question about why he didn’t release the film before the American elections. “Since when are films made to change people’s minds? It’s for people to see what the war was like for them now.”

Like the World War II journalists Ernie Pyle or Bill Mauldin, Tucker, a former Army reservist, has an affinity for the enlisted men, letting them express their own complex feelings about the war, many through free-style raps and one through his guitar playing—both of which provide the film’s soundtrack.

The film also displays soldier’s dark humor—a coping mechanism in stressful situations—as they joke about the quality of their vehicle’s armor, months before Rumsfeld made excuses for it in Kuwait.

Though not an imbedded reporter, Tucker had total access to all operations and did not have to submit any of the 400 hours of footage that he filmed to a military censor because its release wouldn’t put soldiers’ lives in any immediate danger.

However, despite the surprising amount of cooperation that the U.S. military gave him, Tucker has found it difficult to find a distributor in Germany, where he now lives. Europeans feel that the film is too sympathetic to the soldiers, he says, citing a change in European attitude toward Americans after the Abu Ghraib scandal.

Though viewers coming to the film to see either a condemnation or a justification for the war in Iraq will both be disappointed, “Gunner Palace” offers a valuable record of what the men and women serving our country are experiencing right now.

“It’s not about for or against,” he explains, “It’s about talking about it and finding solutions.”


Capsule Review:

Director Michael Tucker offers a gritty, slice-of-life documentary about the American soldiers stationed in one of Uday Hussein’s pleasure palaces as they patrol a hostile neighborhood of Baghdad. With little voice over, Tucker allows the soldiers—who provide the film’s heavy metal and freestyle rap soundtrack—to express their own complex feelings about the war. The drawback of Tucker’s verité style, however, is that it lacks the necessary context to judge their actions. Nevertheless, it gives a much-needed human face to the war in Iraq.

Spanglish (2004)

Directed by: James L. Brooks
Written by: James L. Brooks
Starring: Adam Sandler, Téa Leoni, Paz Vega, Cloris Leachman, Shelbie Bruce and Sarah Steele.

I have to preface this review by saying that I'm not a big fan of Adam Sandler. Billy Madison was -- I'm being generous here -- okay but Little Nicky was quite possibly the worst movie I've ever had to suffer through in the theater. I didn't laugh once but instead pondered for perhaps the longest 90 minutes of my life what would possess anyone in the theater -- include the friends that had dragged me there -- to laugh at this drivel.

That said, I had one overarching reason to see Spanglish: Paz Vega.

I first came into contact with the Spanish-born actress while I was living in Madrid. I'd gotten a free DVD of Lucía y el sexo (Sex and Lucia, if you couldn't figure that out), with the Sunday paper. Unfortunately, since it was a giveaway, it didn't have subtitles. From what I could make of the plot, I could tell that it was about Lucia and . . . I'm sure you can guess what else.

Talking with my English students the next day, learned that it is one of those films that messes with your mind. Even if you can understand the dialogue, the plot about a woman looking for her writer boyfriend who has disappeared and switches between reality and his semibiographical writing, is hard to follow.

Still, the visuals were incredible, and I'm not just talking about the cinematography.

However, one of my students, Veronica, who herself was gorgeous, couldn't understand what the big deal about Paz Vega. Her husband liked her but she couldn't see why. She thought Penelope Cruz was attractive and she was obsessed with Angelina Jolie, but she couldn't see the big deal about Paz Vega.

I don't know, I guess she's got that Spanish girl from next door look. I knew it wasn't a fluke with her, when after watching Pedro Almodóvar's Hable con ella I had to find out who the woman was in the black and white short film within the film and, of course, it turned out to be Vega.

Vega got her start in the Spanish television show "7 vidas", which some have called the Spanish "Friends." I've never watched the show.

Later, I saw her in Sólo mía, for which she was nominated for a Goya Award, Spain's equivilent of the Academy Awards (she won for best new actress for Lucía y el sexo). A relevant film for Spain, Sólo mía deals with the rising problem of domestic violence and the difficulties women face in the legal system trying to deal with. Playing her husband is Sergi López who also played the crooked hotel manager in Dirty Pretty Things. A good looking actor, he has the ability to be just as charming as his character is despicable.

Vega was also in Nadie conoce a nadie, a disappointing thriller set in her hometown of Seville. I've read one film writer that I like to read that the Spanish are great with personal dramas but don't do thrillers too well. From my collection of DVDs that I bought before coming back to America. This seems to be the case.

I've seen 2003's Carmen, based on the novel that inspired Bizet's opera, and it is definitely worth watching. During my binge buying as many Spanish DVDs as I could while they were on sale before I moved back to California, I also bought the musical El Otro lado de la cama but unfortunately I've lost my ability to watch region 2 DVDs so I haven't been able to see it.

Suffice it to say, that Paz Vega is my favorite Spanish actress (followed by Penelope Cruz).

However, I didn't see Spanglish, Vega's American debut, in the theater because I read at least one bad review of it and a few mediocre ones. That combined with Adam Sandler's spotty record was enough to put me off.

But I am sincerely disappointed that I waited for so long because I found it both charming and funny. I even liked Adam Sandler in it too (which isn't totally surprising, becauxe he did show potential in PT Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love. It also struck me that if they were ever to do a film about Bob Dylan, they could cast Adam Sandler. Remember, I said it first and give me a production credit.)

Vega plays a single mother named Flor Moreno who brings her daughter to America, euphemistically "economy class," where she begins working in Los Angeles as a housekeeper for John and Deborah Claskey.

Deborah, played by Téa Leoni, is a character that could only reside in Los Angeles. Utterly self-centered and high-strung, she is the kind of person when she asks her husband why no one ever cares about her feelings, you want to respond that she thinks about them enough for the rest of the world. A fitness freak, she is seen running through the neighborhood shrieking "left" as she passes by.

John, played by Adam Sandler, on the other hand, is a lot more laid back. Surprisingly, since he is the head chef of a restaurant that receives four stars from the New York Times, an accomplishment that depresses him because it leaves him no where to go but down and the restaurants prestige, he believes, will only suck the character out of it. Despite his professional success and his rapport with his children, he can't stand up to his wife who pleads with him to stay "on the same page" with her in dealing with them. But there is never any discussion involved, she leads and he is supposed to follow.

Early on Flor gauges the family's predicament when Deb purposefully buys her daughter Bernice a new wardrobe that is one size too small to encourage her to lose weight but only hurts her feelings instead. John doesn't confront her on this and Flor notes that although he has been in contact with Latin Machismo he shows his emotions more like a Latin woman.

Later in the film, when Deb meets Flor's daughter Cristina, played byShelbie Bruce, she tells Flor with characteristic inappropriateness, "You could make a fortune doing surrogate pregnancy!" Seeing in Shelbie Bruce the attractive daughter that she wishes she had, she repeatedly oversteps the boundaries of her relationship with Flor -- she never seems to recognize anyone's boundaries but her own -- and expropriates Cristina as her own daughter.

And so the film is largely about familial boundaries and Flor's struggle to preserve her identity and dignity -- subject matter that I don't think is too typical of Hollywood. Of course, there is the flirtation of a romance with John, which again doesn't exactly follow the Hollywood guidelines. I have to tip my hat to James L. Brooks who wrote and directed the film for finding a unique perspective on an immigrant's experience, which is quite timely as I write this review, with congress debating immigration reform.

As a the executive producer of "The Simpsons," Brooks also incorporated some very effective gags as when Flor argues with John before she can speak English and has Cristina translate for her, doubling her tone of voice, footsteps and hand gestures. (The last few films I've watched have had some impressive performances by child actors.)

Of course, there are some minor complaints. I think Téa Leoni, or at least her character, could be a little over the top. It's also a little unbelievable that Adam Sandler could be a top-rated chef and not speak a word of Spanish (whether or not you are latino, speaking Spanish goes with the territory in the restaurant industry).

I would also have liked to see more about Bernice, who was played by Sarah Steele, who the film much like her mother, ignores. Although she is a sweet girl she just isn't as attractive as Cristina. At least her father recognizes her.

Overall, I think the film dealt with complex human conflicts with humor, warmth and humanity and the performances by Sandler and Vega make it definitely worth renting.

Whale Rider (2002)

Directed by: Niki Caro
Writing credits: Witi Ihimaera (novel); Niki Caro (screenplay)
Starring: Keisha Castle-Hughes, Rawiri Paratene, Vicky Haughton and Cliff Curtis

For a small budget indie movie, New Zealand's Whale Rider was a surprising -- and deserving -- success. With a budget of NZD 6 million ($3.8 million) it earned more than $20 million just in the US. It's one of those movies where every person I know who's seen it liked it. So of course, it had to go on here. It was one of those films you want to like and get behind and afterward it doesn't let you down.

When Paikea, played by 13-year-old Keisha Castle-Hughes in her impressive debut, was born to the son of a Maori chief, her grandfather Koro's attention was on her twin brother, whom he hoped would be the next great Maori leader, delivering economic and cultural renewal to the stagnating indigenous New Zealanders.

But when her brother died in childbirth with her mother, Koro's dream of leader died with him. And Paikea, whom her father Porourangi named after their legendary ancestor who led the Maori's to New Zealand riding on the back of the whale, was just an afterthought.

Disillusioned by the cultural decay and his father's disappointment, Porourangi, played by veteran actor Cliff Curtis moves to Europe to pursue a career as an artist, leaving Paikea in the hands of Koro, who is played by Rawiri Paratene and his wife (Paikea's grandmother) Nanny Flowers, played by Vicky Haughton.

Koro warms up to Paikea -- but not very much. He still resents her and enough to say, "When she was born, that's when things went wrong for us. " When he gathers the first-born sons to teach them the Maoris' sacred traditions and find a new leader among them, he won't allow Paikea to sit in. However, with her self-conception as Koro's awaited leader so deeply seated in her identity, she has the will and will find a way to learn what she needs to be that leader.

As much as I enjoyed the film and as much as the culture and location were exotic, I can't say that it was totally original. It definitely fit into a genre, one of those intergenerational, cross-cultural dramas much like Bend it Like Beckham, except a little more complex. But that's not to say anything bad about it. There is something satisfying about seeing a film done well. And that, Whale Rider is.

As I mentioned before, it's one of those films that you want to get behind and makes you want to get behind the cultural renewal that Koro and Paikea wish to embark on. I think the film that was based on a novel by Witi Ihimaera, a Maori living in New York, has played an important role in introducing the Maori culture to the US.

I don't know how accurate the film's portrayal of the stagnation in the village is (though the film was filmed on the location of the village that it was about with the actual villagers filling in as the extras), watching the actual villagers interacting with the cast and crew in the "behind-the-scenes" featurette on the DVD, I suspect there will be a few more Maori filmmakers in the near future.