Robert here with some thoughts on 2003. This past decade was a fantastic one for documentaries. Truly great. But the best documentary of the decade was released in 2003 and comes courtesy Errol Morris. The Fog of War.
Morris is a successful documentarian because he knows how to get his point across in a wide variety of ways. Here it's not just the speech of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara (who's both candid and slippery) but an endless sequence comparing fire-bombed Japanese cities and their American equivalents that had my mouth breathlessly agape in shock. Powerful film making indeed.
My apologies for the unnecessary subtitles.
4 comments:
The whole movie is absolutely chilling. That montage has to be seen to be believed. McNamara's bizarre mix of candor and whitewashing makes his legacy even more complicated. I mean, he just brushes off the use of Agent Orange but seems truly repentant over the firebombings.
The film is a shoe-in for my Top 10 of the decade. Probably Top 5 even.
lol, why do you have to apologize for the subtitles?
God, and how about the Philip Glass music, underscoring the dialogue with its eerie beauty? What a great movie.
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