As I said, this film, taken in the right spirit, is deeply challenging. The central quandary of war emerges for the viewer to see: it is the business of killing people, and that means that mistakes cause people to die needlessly. McNamara was a truthful, but limited, account of the major events-events ranging from.
The portrait of McNamara, as well as the two presidents he served, is one of human beings through and through, with all the fallibility and conflictedness that entails. Free Essay: The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. I don't think I will ever forget McNamara's probing, clearly emotional questioning of the rules of war or the lack thereof, when he discusses how one evening he and general Curtis LeMay decided to burn to death 100,000 people in the Tokyo firebombing. The point is that history is bigger than its main players, and inscrutably difficult to judge in a definitive moral sense. The point, though, is the complexity itself. Many of the reviews I read of the film complain that there doesn't seem to be a main point that emerges from the film or its eleven "lessons," which are admittedly too cute by half in many cases. For the rest of us, however, Errol Morris presents a truly complex picture of a clearly complex man. Academy Award(r)-winner for Best Documentary Feature, THE FOG OF WAR is the story of America as seen through the eyes of the former Secretary of Defense.
If you possess an especially smug view of history's finality, this film may not do a great deal to impress you.