Robert McNamara having a long chat with Errol Morris through an interrotron.
Auteur Theory generally explores the notion of the film director as the sole author of his/her film. Most of us today can notice a film simply by its director. For example, you can see Stanley Kubrick's fingerprints all over his films, because his aesthetic was a specific one: long takes, repeated lines of dialogue, eerie music. Today audiences are so attuned to the particular ways of directors that they can notice directors who are NOT auteurs: take Brett Ratner, Barry Sonnenfeld and Tony Gilroy as examples. They seem to be making films for the studios and not for their own aesthetic, although you can notice who directed what. The producer probably thinks, "this director is good for the job." Auteur recognition and theory originally came about from French New Wave filmmaker Francois Truffaut (dir. The 400 Blows, Small Change) in the late 1950s, in a French journal. In the early 1960s, the same ideas were emerging in America, from writer and film theorist Andrew Sarris.
Does Errol Morris fit the description of auteur filmmaker? I would argue yes. Even though he collaborates with production assistants, his personal vision is very specific and can come from ONLY him. He employs techniques that beg the workings and duties of an auteur, specifically his use of an interrotron device. He points a camera at his subject to be interviewed, and in front of this camera is a screen with his own image, so that the subject can be looking at him while being filmed at the same time, in turn speaking to the audience, making it a personal conversation. He also has his subjects sitting in built sets, so what seems to be a living room is actually a representation of a living room (in his doc A Brief History of Time, 1991). He also stages reenactments using actors (sometimes not) doing specific actions (e.g. in The Fog of War, we see rows of dominoes aligned over a map of Southeast Asia, literally manifesting a 1970's war term to life). He provides massive amounts of researched B-Roll footage. Varying shutter speeds are other techniques Morris films harbor. His collaboration with music composer Philip Glass is also an indication of his auteur bent. Glass' scores add repetitive melodies which cohere to the subject matter of Morris' films. Philip Glass was a founder of minimalism in music in the late 70's/early 80's. Check out the film Koyaanisqatsi (1982), which features his music!
Errol Morris and the interrotron.
For his film, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, documentary filmmaker Errol Morris is tackling anti-war sentiment while conversing directly with a former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara about the bombing campaign of Japan at the end of World War Two, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Vietnam War. I generally think Morris is a liberal, and expresses liberal (political) values in his films. But I would also make the case that he is apolitical in a way; that Morris is simply uncovering facts and details about what happened in history, letting his subjects uncover the details naturally. In his doc, Standard Operating Procedure (2008), he observes photographs taken at Abu Ghraib prison; photographs which show nothing else but the content of Iraqi prisoners being tortured by American infantry men and women after the U.S. invasion in 2003. When he interviews McNamara, it's not so much Morris expressing regret over why the U.S. involvement in Vietnam had to happen (because it was a long, grief-ridden incident), but more about Morris shedding light on McNamara's personal options in his life at the time. He did what he had to do to feed his family and to be a successful worker and businessman. What is astonishing and unpredictable is that McNamara openly admits to having made mistakes during wartime; that he could have prevented the Vietnam war from escalating. There were clearly other men in power (Curtis LeMay, LBJ) who wanted war to occur, for the purpose of business and profit, and McNamara aligned himself with them for the sake of duty.
What are the eleven lessons McNamara provides? In the film they are separated as chapters:
1. Empathize with your enemy
2. Rationality will not save us
3. There's something beyond one's self
4. Maximize efficiency
5. Proportionality should be a guideline in war
6. Get the data
7. Belief and seeing are often both wrong
8. Be prepared to re-examine your reasoning
9. In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil
10. Never say never
11. You can't change human nature
Morris documentaries often explore truth, or the infraction of it. For the Financial Times, Ned Martel wrote that Morris "documentaries often chart searches for self- justification. He took on an engineer of human executions in 1999's Mr. Death, and he uncovered a botched prosecution in 1988's A Thin Blue Line. Personal responsibility is The Fog of War's central question and McNamara answers more with the imposition of context and intricate explanations than with any personal apology." He goes onto write that McNamara "sought more chances to turn all the hostility directed at him into learning opportunities for those enraged by his decisions." (Martel) This is an accurate portrayal of Morris films and McNamara's stance in his retrospective interview. McNamara is altruistic in this sense, to educate for the sake of the common good. At his elderly age, it makes sense that a man would want to look back at his career and shed some light on the mistakes he's made in the past in order to influence the politics of the future.
Mark Feeney for the Boston Globe, cites Morris' observations of his filmmaking process as well as McNamara's intentions during his career. Morris says, "what's uncontrolled, if you like, is what that person's going to say. They're creating a script for me." That person creating a script for "The Fog of War" is, of course, McNamara. "My own feelings on Vietnam have not changed in three-plus decades: appalling then, appalling now," Morris says. But his view of McNamara has. "In the past, perhaps, I believed McNamara was that person I read about, "Morris says, "the IBM machine with legs, the number cruncher, the statistician, blah blah blah blah. I don't believe it anymore. I believe, actually, he was a moral and an ethical man faced with decisions. Some of the decisions he made were right. Many were wrong. But they don't seem to have come out of some cynicism, some malfeasance. It seems sadder than that. It seems all too human." (Feeney) This is a good observation about Morris' process; he embraces the human subject and the world of understanding they are coming from.
In the Toronto Star, Morris is quoted for observing McNamara's own history and juxtaposing it to the history of the 20th century. The article states that "the viewer is ultimately expected to render his or her own judgments. Morris' intense questioning and insightful juxtaposition of fact and opinion, of image and sound create a much deeper involvement by the viewer than most such works ever attain. He doesn't necessarily agree with everything McNamara says in the film, but he obviously admires the man's forthrightness and his desire to do the right thing, even if history eventually proves him wrong. "Robert McNamara's history," Morris says, "is the history of the 20th Century." This is a good observation to note, for it draws viewers into Morris' intentions and gaining the right information for the right message he wants to send.
In the Grimes article, Paul Schrader touched on an observation, saying that "directors most revered by auteur critics for their personal styles, workhorses like Howard Hawks and John Ford, tended to produce films on the assembly line, with severe restrictions on whatever personal vision they might have had. But the assembly line allowed them to amass a large body of work with its own personality and endless material for auteurists to pick over." (Grimes, NYT) This is a good critical observation of how films were being made in the 1940s, a different time when compared to the development of cinema in the 1960s.
For the theme of auteur theory, there's a question of how noticeable and obvious a filmmaker's techniques are, which Schrader mentioned. He "worried about the self-consciousness and preoccupation with stylistic quirks that auteurism promoted. He said: "Sometimes, when I'm making a film, I actually find myself thinking, if I make the next shot just like a certain shot in 'American Gigolo,' maybe somebody down the road will notice. You really catch yourself doing it. This is perverse. Should I do this just so some overfed, overwrought cineaste in Omaha can say 'Aha!'?"" (Grimes) Although I think Schrader makes a smart observation, I believe that the auteur filmmaker's role is crucial, even though specific techniques are noticeable. It's important to have a director put his/her mark in cinema history with their perspective.
Schrader also compares contemporary film directors to the older film directors. "Spike Lee, David Cronenberg and John Sayles control their films in a way that the old directors could only dream of," he (Paul Schrader) said. "But does this make them better?" (Grimes) I believe this observation isn't so apt, because I don't think that it's an apples to apples comparison when viewing Spike Lee alongside John Ford or whoever. The film industry was drastically different and organized structurally in Hollywood, which in the 1980s and 90's had become a different animal of operation. There seemed to be standards of filmmaking in the early days of cinema that contemporary films were then free of.
I personally embrace the role of the auteur filmmaker. I feel it's necessary for directors to find their own voice and aesthetic; it's as natural and organic as growing old and maturing. It's important that a film have an individualistic point of view, because audiences relate to this. Oliver Stone films are important to audiences because of Stone's liberal perspective on war and American media and its effect on society. When I hear "auteur" I usually think Truffaut or Aki Kaurismaki. Kaurismaki films, similar to the aesthetic of Jim Jarmusch's films, ring true to the role of auteur because of an affinity with marginalized characters of society and their predicaments and situations, as well as attention to minimalism.
In addition to showing a few clips from the documentary, I've chosen to showcase some DVD titles from auteur filmmakers, in order to prove my point that auteur filmmakers should be embraced by moviegoers (not just their films).
The Fog of War won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for 2003.
Here's an insightful interview with Errol Morris about his reasoning for exploring the subject of documentaries, around the time of his doc about the American involvement in Abu Ghraib prison circa 2003, Standard Operating Procedure:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHNf4No5WtY
And an interview Morris did for 60 Minutes (CBS):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzPoIOQLFb0
And an additional article, written by Errol Morris himself, for the Opinionator section of The New York Times, from July 7, 2009. He outlines McNamara's legacy and asks some rhetorical questions for the reader:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/mcnamara-in-context/
Sources:
Feeney, Mark. "Watching the Detective Errol Morris's investigation of Robert S. McNamara in "Fog of War' impels viewers to conduct their own." Boston Globe 18 January 2004. Pages N.9.
Retried from ProQuest.
Grimes, William. "The Auteur Theory of Film: Holy or Just Full of Holes?" The New York Times
20 February 1993. PP. 1-1.9. Retrieved from ProQuest.
Martel, Ned. "Old warhorse looks back down the lines: DOCUMENTARY CINEMA: Statesman Robert McNamara shares his Vietnam experience in Errol Morris's 'Fog of War'." Financial Times 19 December 2003. Pages 10. Retrieved from ProQuest.
"No sacred cows are safe from the lens of Errol Morris; Takes aim at U.S. foreign policy in Fog of War Robert McNamara defends pragmatic choices, right to lie." Toronto Star 4 September 2003. Pages E.03. Retrieved from ProQuest.
