The Fog of War Filmmaking

Eugene Jarecki’s documentary Why We Fight, which attempts to capture a holistic view of the American “military industrial complex” is an interesting piece of work, a mixed bag if you will. The film asks a (seeminingly) simple question about the militarization of American society, and introduces numerous diverse topics without delving deep into any, resulting in a tangled mess of innuendo interwoven with the imagery of injured children and dead bodies.

Many of the topics he brings up are important, but in his attempt to take a “holistic” approach, things are rushed and he treats them with an unfortunate stridency. I pray that people watching this film have other sources of information, because this film isn’t telling the whole story. Maybe it is the curse of watching movies when you are a “specialist.” I felt like how a doctor must feel when watching a film about a hospital directed by someone who has never studied medicine (“100cc’s of WHAT!?”).

Though there were numerous topics that I was unsatisfied with the coverage, I thought his approach on the issue of congressional districts and defence contractors was bang on. There is a systemic problem there that needs to be fixed. Chuck Spinney makes an appearance (and drops the only F-bomb in the movie!) and watching a magician front for Halliburton is pretty ludicrous.

The main messages of the movie seems to be that democracy “lost out” to capitalism (huh!?), America is an empire (surprise surprise!) and empires inevitably fall (to paraphrase FP, file that one under “Pope still Catholic”). Yet there is an interesting vignette of a retired NYPD sergeant who was for the War in Iraq and feels “lied” to by the administration. He asks himself if he was morally wrong to support the war, and decides “no” because the decision could only be made with the available information at the time. I wish the director had learned from the interviewee’s ability to remember context.