The Fog of War

Heard the news today that Robert McNamara has passed away.  By coincidence, Marc and I just saw The Fog of War two days ago. I would describe the movie as “chilling.” Robert McNamara is clearly a thoughtful, intelligent, reasonable person.  Yet in the movie he describes his involvement with fire-bombings in WWII – actions he admits would be “war crimes” if the U.S. had lost. He is the secretary of defense during the Vietnam war, and oversees the escalation there.

Overall, you get the picture of someone who is caught up in larger events and is unable to wrestle with them. The larger machinations of nations, and the prejudices and assumptions that go unchallenged, seem to carry him along with them.

I find it scary.  I may be naive, but I have always hoped that with small steps towards rationality, every generation will get better at peaceful conflict resolution.  Yet, the mistakes and thinking that he reveals are so simple.  “Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning” is one of his lessons.  Don’t we know this?  Shouldn’t people in power have checks and balances on how they make decisions?

It’s all very scary.  I hope that McNamara’s legacy is for future leaders to learn from his mistakes, but I don’t know how likely that is.

Auf Wiedersehen Fjordian

As a thank you for my time at Fjord, I’ve put together a collection of my special “moves” that have been the secret to my success.

A shout out to ze frank for the inspiration.

Movie: Children of Men

Holy Bejeezus. Children of Men was fucking awesome. It starts slow, but later you realize that was totally on purpose because when it gets going, it fucking goes. And it has action, but it’s not an action movie. There are an insane number of continuous steady-cam shots meaning NO CUTS. The actors and seemingly endless hordes of extras just react for 10 or 15 minute stretches. No cuts means no breather so you’re just in it with the characters.

In response to some other reviews I’ve read, I think it is a mistake to think this movie has a political message. Just because a movie has politics, doesn’t make it political. In this case, the message is simple “Life is precious.” Any other messages the film seemed to have, I feel, were only there as a way to quickly and easily contextualize the characters in a landscape the audience would understand.

See this movie in a theater, I imagine some of the intensity would be lost on a small screen.