Fog of War

It wasn't really as good as "Hearts and Minds". Honestly, the first half bored me to death. But then when they got into Vietnam, the documentary got substantially better, and a lot of the points made about the war were very eye-opening because they were from this completely different perspective. Seeing this war from the eyes of someone who, arguably, was one of the masterminds behind it was a very interesting journey.

It's not like the documentary provided stuff that we didn't already know about the war, as far as violence and deaths were concerned. But I really enjoyed the "behind the scenes" footage. Listening to the phone conversations provided depth to the documentary, and a lot of insightful evidence to the claims being made. Also, there were moments where the scene would just shut off, and there would be this blank screen for half a second. These scenes were especially effective because they always came after this really deep thought or statement, and a pause afterwards really made the message stay in your head. It also provided time for the message to register and linger on long after the movie has ended.

I especially enjoyed the ending, where McNamara confronts the fact that there are a LOT of people who just plain detest him. His response to this, that he understands that, and that these people just don't know what its like, really had an impact on me. I mean, this whole time, we're sitting over here thinking "My God, the U.S. was so horrible during the war!", but we never really saw it from the perspective of the people who were forced to keep it going. Did they really have a choice? Were they not humans as well, just trying to do their job? They must have had some circumstances that prevented them from backing down. No human can be a killing machine. There mut be a reason behind the forced continuation of murder.

Also, I just wanted to say that the guy "interviewing" McNamara sounded like a douche.