At the end of this film, Errol Morris asks its subject, Donald Rumsfeld, why he is participating in the film at all. The response he gets is, "I'll be damned if I know."
Morris has a particular genius for drawing and highlighting themes from the raw, direct interview material of his subjects. And prominent here is Rumsfeld's unusual and apparently absolutely comfort with uncertainty. "You can't know with certainty, he tells us. "When you say, 'How could you know?' the answer is, 'You can't.'" In old press conference film he misquotes Hamlet to assert that "there are some things neither bad nor good but thinking makes them so." He assures us with a glib grin that "All generalizations are false -- including this one."
But the film invites us to take note that Rumsfeld is not just comfortable with uncertainly, but comfortable with acting on that uncertainty in ways that lead to catastrophes like the Iraq War. For Rumsfeld, not only is absence of evidence that Saddam Hussein did have "weapons of mass destruction" not evidence that he did not -- but that lack of evidence that he did not is reason enough to go to war. Rumsfeld shows himself to be a dangerous man because not only is he aware that he can't reach absolute truth, he's profoundly incurious about approaching information that would approximate truth.
Morris doesn't narrate, but his voice here is a prominent one. Rumsfeld, often terse, impossible to pin down, and obsessed with definitions, is engaged in dialog with his interviewer, who through both sharp and naif questions as well as eloquent imagery and editing presents a counter-narrative that neatly undermines Rumsfeld's. Over the course of about 100 minutes of listening to Donald Rumsfeld, he allows himself to show himself to us as deeply self-contradictory -- and deeply satisfied with acting in an examined way.
This is a sharply intelligent and subtle film, dealing with and revealing a mystifying almost deliberately thoughtless subject.
Morris has a particular genius for drawing and highlighting themes from the raw, direct interview material of his subjects. And prominent here is Rumsfeld's unusual and apparently absolutely comfort with uncertainty. "You can't know with certainty, he tells us. "When you say, 'How could you know?' the answer is, 'You can't.'" In old press conference film he misquotes Hamlet to assert that "there are some things neither bad nor good but thinking makes them so." He assures us with a glib grin that "All generalizations are false -- including this one."
But the film invites us to take note that Rumsfeld is not just comfortable with uncertainly, but comfortable with acting on that uncertainty in ways that lead to catastrophes like the Iraq War. For Rumsfeld, not only is absence of evidence that Saddam Hussein did have "weapons of mass destruction" not evidence that he did not -- but that lack of evidence that he did not is reason enough to go to war. Rumsfeld shows himself to be a dangerous man because not only is he aware that he can't reach absolute truth, he's profoundly incurious about approaching information that would approximate truth.
Morris doesn't narrate, but his voice here is a prominent one. Rumsfeld, often terse, impossible to pin down, and obsessed with definitions, is engaged in dialog with his interviewer, who through both sharp and naif questions as well as eloquent imagery and editing presents a counter-narrative that neatly undermines Rumsfeld's. Over the course of about 100 minutes of listening to Donald Rumsfeld, he allows himself to show himself to us as deeply self-contradictory -- and deeply satisfied with acting in an examined way.
This is a sharply intelligent and subtle film, dealing with and revealing a mystifying almost deliberately thoughtless subject.