The latest from Errol Morris, this documentary is a trip through the history and mind of Donald Rumsfeld, GW Bush's Secretary of Defense.
During the Q&A, Morris mentioned that some considered this to be a companion piece to his doc on Robert McNamera ("The Fog of War"). I actually think it's a companion piece to "the Armstrong Lie", which I saw yesterday. Like Lance Armstrong, Rumsfeld is a cold, calculating and charismatic individual. Both men are practised architects of their own reality and very little gets through to them without being adapted to that reality. Where they differ is that Armstrong is prepared,to destroy opposition; it's not as apparent with Rumsfeld that he does this, but perhaps he is better at hiding the bodies.
Much of the historical context for the film comes from memos that Rumsfeld wrote over several decades. He referred to them as "snowflakes" as they were always written on white paper. He documented his thoughts obsessively. The title of the film comes from a statement that Rumsfeld made about knowledge falling into one of four categories -- the unknown known is something you think you know, but really don't.
It's an entertaining and interesting exchange between Rumsfeld and Morris. The over-riding question that emerged from the film is why did Rumsfeld agree to it? It's a question that Morris puts to him at the end of the film and it's one of the few that he answers with a "I don't know" answer. The question remains.
Recommended.
1 comment:
There's a decent interview with Errol Morris in this morning's Star (http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/tiff/2013/09/11/tiff_2013_director_errol_morris_probes_donald_rumsfeld_the_shallow_man_who_sent_america_to_war.html) where he repeats some of the material from yesterday's Q&A.
I thought his comments about Rumsfeld's lack of self-awareness quite interesting. The other impression that the film gives from his seemingly endless discussion of the "snowflakes" he'd written over the years is someone consumed by his own banality.
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