The Unknown Known (12A.)
The Unknown Known. (12A.)
Directed by Errol Morris. Featuring Donald Rumsfeld and Errol Morris. 103 mins.
Somewhere in the decade between Dr Strangelove and Watergate we became comfortable with, or at least accustomed to, the notion of American politics as a continual dare to give power to ever more garish, caricature grotesques. Donald Rumsfeld, who busied himself in White House administrations and the Pentagon for four decades, and was Secretary of Defence during the Iraq War, is the trump card in a hand that has already dealt Reagan, Quayle and Bush. With his squint eyed delivery and clenched grin, during press briefings he often resembled a retired dentist doing a Clint Eastwood impersonation for his golf buddies, but with a dash of Max Headroom. (Even the name sounds like a mad scientist’s assistant and lends itself to being said in a Peter Lorre voice, “Rumzfeld, fetch another brain from the cellar,”.) His line about known knowns, known unknowns etc. was the ultimate Bushism.
All of which makes him the archetypal subject for a film by Errol Morris, America’s foremost documentary filmmaker. Morris doing Rumsfeld is, in documentary terms, as exciting a prospect as Spielberg making a Bond film and it doesn’t disappoint. Morris’s mastery of the genre can be seen in the way he makes what is basically an interview such a stimulating and enthralling piece of cinema.
Unlike Bush, who blundered into his verbal mistakes, Rumsfeld’s were thought out little epigrams and during his career he was an obsessive memo writer. Morris likes a hook for his films so he bases the film on Rumsfeld reading out selected memos, little white pieces of paper he calls snowflakes, and commenting on them. Rumsfeld is a fascinating performer: knowledgeable, thoughtful and with a frightening lack of self-awareness. He’s analytical to a degree that is indeed anal, always scurrying off to his dictionary to look up the exact definition of a word and then firing off a memo to inform everybody else of it. (He must’ve been a nightmare to work for.) Yet all this analysis never seems to reveal to him what was actually going on and leads him to tie himself up in various contradictory statements.
He is entertaining though. The best quote is perhaps the one on his long lasting marriage. He got married at 21 even though he knew it was too early but because he didn’t want to risk losing her. Reflecting on this he says, “It was a good decision. I was correct.”
Morris has been here before – The Fog of War did something similar with a previous Secretary of Defence, Robert McNamara with similar results. He appeals to their vanity by giving them a feature length to espouse their version of history. It’s thrilling cinema because it gives you an illusory sense of being on the inside of history looking out rather than being on the outside and having it foisted upon you. He humanises the monsters and makes then that bit more terrifying; maybe they aren’t evil, just out of their depth but too deluded to realise.
The Unknown Known. (12A.)
Directed by Errol Morris. Featuring Donald Rumsfeld and Errol Morris. 103 mins.
Somewhere in the decade between Dr Strangelove and Watergate we became comfortable with, or at least accustomed to, the notion of American politics as a continual dare to give power to ever more garish, caricature grotesques. Donald Rumsfeld, who busied himself in White House administrations and the Pentagon for four decades, and was Secretary of Defence during the Iraq War, is the trump card in a hand that has already dealt Reagan, Quayle and Bush. With his squint eyed delivery and clenched grin, during press briefings he often resembled a retired dentist doing a Clint Eastwood impersonation for his golf buddies, but with a dash of Max Headroom. (Even the name sounds like a mad scientist’s assistant and lends itself to being said in a Peter Lorre voice, “Rumzfeld, fetch another brain from the cellar,”.) His line about known knowns, known unknowns etc. was the ultimate Bushism.
All of which makes him the archetypal subject for a film by Errol Morris, America’s foremost documentary filmmaker. Morris doing Rumsfeld is, in documentary terms, as exciting a prospect as Spielberg making a Bond film and it doesn’t disappoint. Morris’s mastery of the genre can be seen in the way he makes what is basically an interview such a stimulating and enthralling piece of cinema.
Unlike Bush, who blundered into his verbal mistakes, Rumsfeld’s were thought out little epigrams and during his career he was an obsessive memo writer. Morris likes a hook for his films so he bases the film on Rumsfeld reading out selected memos, little white pieces of paper he calls snowflakes, and commenting on them. Rumsfeld is a fascinating performer: knowledgeable, thoughtful and with a frightening lack of self-awareness. He’s analytical to a degree that is indeed anal, always scurrying off to his dictionary to look up the exact definition of a word and then firing off a memo to inform everybody else of it. (He must’ve been a nightmare to work for.) Yet all this analysis never seems to reveal to him what was actually going on and leads him to tie himself up in various contradictory statements.
He is entertaining though. The best quote is perhaps the one on his long lasting marriage. He got married at 21 even though he knew it was too early but because he didn’t want to risk losing her. Reflecting on this he says, “It was a good decision. I was correct.”
Morris has been here before – The Fog of War did something similar with a previous Secretary of Defence, Robert McNamara with similar results. He appeals to their vanity by giving them a feature length to espouse their version of history. It’s thrilling cinema because it gives you an illusory sense of being on the inside of history looking out rather than being on the outside and having it foisted upon you. He humanises the monsters and makes then that bit more terrifying; maybe they aren’t evil, just out of their depth but too deluded to realise.
