The Unknown Known (2013)

One of the best films i have seen

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Errol Morris tackles another former United States Secretary of Defense in Donald Rumsfeld with an in-depth interview. It starts mainly on the invasion of Iraq but covers his entire Washington career and his personal life. The Iraq stuff is not anything new especially if one had paid attention. Rumsfeld is as evasive as ever. His earlier work for previous Presidents holds some interest inside stories. The obvious comparison is Errol Morris' masterpiece "The Fog of War". In that one, Robert McNamara is much less a politician and more of a wise elder lamenting mistakes. That is a much more compelling watch. This one is an extended Sunday morning political talk show and a simple biodoc of Rumsfeld's career. Errol Morris' views are obvious from his questioning. The history is informative but nothing shocking. Maybe in another twenty years, Rumsfeld will have something more interesting and surprising to say.

Either Errol Morris underestimated Donald Rumsfeld or he was overly confident about the power of his medium, but the result is far below The Fog of War.Sure McNamara had had time to mellow and he wouldn't deny mistakes while Rumsfeld won't move an inch, except for the staged emotional bit, so in the Unknown Known we only have politics at its worst: unabashed dissimulation, total rejection of any form of empathy (while it was one of the Eleven Lessons from Robert S. McNamara, Empathize with your Enemy) all wrapped up in the flag and under the pretence that "We, the Best Breed of Politicians, have to make important decisions that are way too complex for you, Little Man, to begin to understand".Watching Rumsfeld having it his way, no less than during his own press conferences where he toyed around with journalists, is a profoundly disgusting and distressing vision. He unflinchingly tell us "Ok, eventually there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Irak, intelligence was flawed, but going after Saddam Hussein has made the world a better place all the same". Intelligence was not just flawed, it was distorted and even fabricated to please the warmongers.Bad things (like torture) just happens. Even when you are doing a heck of a job. That is Rumsfeld definitive argument and Errol Morris gets stuck in the "beauty of evil rhetorics" like a deer in the headlights. It is distressing to think that someone watching this without knowing all the subtext would think of Rumsfeld as a role model for Statesmen. The only redeeming part is that the documentary succeeds in suggesting how big a SOB Rumsfeld has been during his career, so much so that Reagan picked his rival George HW Bush as his running mate, sparing the World the disaster of having Rumsfeld President in the 80s. Then he had to work for Bush Jr and his former deputy, yet maybe that gave the same general disaster (geopolitical, economical...) as having Rumsfeld officially in the Oval Office.

Overall, a pretty good treatment of an important subject for a documentary. Errol Morris does, however, return to his favorite directorial conceits over and over again.One such tic of his is the sped up view of a skyline (with the clouds racing across the sky, day turning into twilight, then night all in a few seconds). I suppose some directors use this technique to indicate the passage of time, but in this movie most scenes opened with titles on the screen indicating the month, day, year, etc. Hence, no need for the fast-moving clouds.Also, because Rumsfeld referred to his messages as "snowflakes," Morris over-used the glass ball snowflakes as a bridge between many scenes. Morris is an admirable documentary film maker and shouldn't fall into the habit of pro forma use of such conceits.

The Unknown Known is Errol Morris' biopic on Donald Rumsfeld, navy officer, congressman, special envoy, secretary of defense for two presidents(Jerry Ford and W.) Morris's previous work includes Gates of Heaven, Vernon, Florida, Thin Blue Line, A Brief History of Time and Fog of War all highly praised and, along with Chris Marker, he might be the most idiosyncratic picture maker of the post-modern era. Famous sequences: Rumsfeld explaining the "unknown known;" his early career in the Nixon and Ford administrations; the black and white time lapse sequences; the attack on the Pentagon; Rumsfeld constant smirk as he explains his actions before and after 9/11. this one isn't probably isn't up to par with his other work and it might not please the echo chambers on both sides of the political spectrum. however, it's worth a look.