The Fog of War, the movie that finally won Errol Morris the best documentary Oscar, is a spellbinder. Morris interviews Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and finds a uniquely unsettling viewpoint on much of 20th-century American history. Employing a ton of archival material, including LBJ’s fascinating taped conversations from the Oval Office, Morris probes the reasons behind the U.S. commitment to the Vietnam War–and finds a depressingly inconsistent policy. McNamara himself emerges as–well, not exactly apologetic, but clearly haunted by the what-ifs of Vietnam. He also mulls the bombing of Japan in World War II and the Cuban Missile Crisis, raising more questions than he answers. The Fog of War has the usual inexorable Morris momentum, aided by an uneasy Philip Glass score. This movie provides a glimpse inside government. It also encourages skepticism about same.

Amazon Review: At 85, McNamara has lost little of his ability to speak articulately and to remember details from conversations that took place more than 40 years ago. He is a little weaker in drawing meaningful conclusions except for a relatively lame list of “lessons” that he wants to impart to us. Boiled down to essentials, these lessons (such as “get the data”) are simply warning us to make sure we know what we’re doing before we fight a war. The lessons fail to give any real insight into what actually went wrong in Vietnam and how we might have prevented it.

In reading past articles about McNamara, I thought he had become contrite about his role in the Vietnam conflict and would bare his soul to all who would listen. I’m not saying he SHOULD be contrite, I’m just saying that I thought he was. But this movie offers no real mea culpa on McNamara’s part. By the end of the film, I had the impression that he was clearly blaming Lyndon Johnson for the escalation of the war. And, after blaming Johnson, Mc Namara grudgingly takes personal responsibility in that maddening 90′s style that says “I’m not responsible, but will accept responsibility.” Sort of like, “If you want to blame me, go ahead.”

The movie is weak only where McNamara is weak: it offers few insights that most of us didn’t already have intuitively. But the movie does reveal riveting aspects of McNamara the man. It dwells on tight close ups of the face so familiar to those of us old enough to remember when it displayed infinitely more arrogance than it does today. That ancient face gives away little, though, except for the eyes, which betray the uncertainty and guilt of the man. Those eyes are fogged with the effects of war and with the self-preserving instincts of the public servant. But the pain eventually cuts through the fog and envelops both Mcnamara and ourselves.