Ethics and War Series: Fog of War (Academy Award Winner, "Best Documentary Feature")
The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara is a 2003 film about the life and times of former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. The film, directed by Errol Morris, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature (2003) and the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Feature (2003). Using archival footage, United States Cabinet conversation recordings, and an interview of the eighty-five-year-old Robert McNamara, The Fog of War depicts McNamara's life, from his birth during the First World War remembering the time American troops returned from Europe, to working as a WWII Whiz Kid military officer, to being the Ford Motor Company's president, to his being employed as Secretary of Defense and the Cuban Missile Crisis, to managing the American Vietnam War, as defense secretary for presidents Kennedy and Johnson — emphasizing the war's brutality under their regimes, and how he was hired as secretary of defense, despite limited military experience.
According to Morris, hearing McNamara raise all of these ethical issues and questions about a war which most of us see as morally unambiguous is very, very powerful. What Morris especially liked about the film was that it proved it was possible to make a movie about events – events that are removed from us by 40, 50, 60 years but which are very much about today. Many of the issues that McNamara is talking about in the movie are relevant to what's going on right now, and there's this surreal sense that nothing has changed.
Faculty talk back led by Scott Sagan (Co-Director of Center for International Security and Cooperation / Political Science, Stanford)
The Ethics and War series is sponsored by:
The McCoy Family Center for Ethics in SocietyThe Stanford Humanities Center The Center for International Security and Cooperation [CISAC] The Stanford Creative Writing ProgramThe Program on Human Rights Stanford Summer TheaterThe Program on Global JusticeStanford Continuing StudiesTaube Center for Jewish Studies Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts (SiCa)The John S. Knight Fellowship Program