Its another post on The Fog of War<\/I> because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m really enjoying this movie! Anyway, I took it with me when I went to visit my fianc\u00c3\u00a9e and his family for Easter, and made him watch it with me. This was good for me since I got to see the first hour or so of the movie again. So I thought my fianc\u00c3\u00a9e would really like this movie since it focuses a lot on war, and he was in the Air Force ROTC all through college; while he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s decided to go into the armed forces, all of his college friends now serve in some branch of the armed forces. So before the movie begins, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m telling him what it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about so he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be prepared. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It has some action, like, there are scenes of old war footage and stuff, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s basically an interview with Robert McNamara.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You mean the idiot from the Vietnam war?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d This, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll admit surprised me a bit, since I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never heard McNamara called an idiot before, not that he comes up often in every-day conversations. Naturally, I wanted to know why<\/I> McNamara was an idiot, so I asked. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Because, he tried to apply math and formulas to war.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Now, my fianc\u00c3\u00a9e is also and engineer, so he loves his math and equations and all things that I, as an English major, don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really understand. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Well, what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wrong with equations and war?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d This makes sense to me \u00e2\u20ac\u201c its wrong to apply math to a situation where millions of human lives hang in the balance, and I expect my fianc\u00c3\u00a9e to say this, especially because several of his friends are currently serving in Iraq. But, no. He says \u00e2\u20ac\u0153because there are too many variables in war, so you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come up with an equation for it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Um, okay. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m convinced this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Morris\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s point of view, especially in light of one scene halfway through the film, where you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell if the people and city Morris shows while McNamara is talking about killing millions of people is in Japan or in America. I think Morris is saying very clearly, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t turn people into numbers, into an equation.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Maybe for McNamara and my fianc\u00c3\u00a9e it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a math thing. Maybe its an armed forces thing \u00e2\u20ac\u201c you know its war and you know what you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re getting yourself into, so you better be prepared to die, or maybe its something else that I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t figure out. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m also having a hard time figuring out the organization of this movie. When I watch it, it makes perfect sense, but when I think about it later, it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make so much sense to me. Also, Morris is doing some pretty blatant cuts during McNamara\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s speech, which makes me wonder if Morris is manipulating his conversation. Yet, the short conversation between Morris and McNamara at the beginning of the film seems like its there to show that McNamara frequently said things that either directly addressed Morris or suddenly went of topic, and he expected Morris to edit it out and fix it later. This doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to be the case in any other of Morris\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s movies (not that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen them all, so its possible it takes place in Mr. Death), so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure there must be a good reason for it, I just wish I knew what that reason was!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Its another post on The Fog of War because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m really enjoying this movie! Anyway, I took it with me when I went to visit my fianc\u00c3\u00a9e and his family for Easter, and made him watch it with me. This … Continue reading