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McNamara--Does He Feel Guilty?

Tom McNamee, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times (Jan. 18, 2004):

In the movies, people change. George Bailey in"It's a Wonderful Life." Phil Connors in"Groundhog Day." All those jerks in those Adam Sandler movies who turn sweet. So thank God for documentaries, where people almost never change. At least that's honest.

Watch enough documentaries and it's easy to doubt the transformative powers of growing older. Documentaries tend to confirm what most of us secretly suspect on our way to grammar school reunions -- the dreamer will still be dreaming and the apple polisher will still be sucking up.

In the 1989 documentary"Let's Get Lost," jazz trumpeter Chet Baker is forever the romantic and manipulative brooder. In"The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl" (1993), the Nazi filmmaker remains resolutely disconnected from horrific consequences of her art.

And in Michael Apted's celebrated"Up" documentaries -- a series of films in which a group of British children are followed through their lives, revisited every seven years -- it's either reassuring or scary (depending on how much you, the viewer, approve of the kid you once were) to detect so much of the former child in these adults. They grow up and move along in their lives, changing careers and spouses and political views. But something fundamental to who they were at the mere age of 7 -- whether a sense of haughtiness or loneliness or gentleness or inquisitiveness -- remains in their adult incarnations.

Which brings us to Bob McNamara.

In"The Fog of War," by the documentary filmmaker (and former anti-war protester) Errol Morris, former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, who served under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, wrestles with deep moral questions about his roles in the Vietnam War and, before that, World War II.

Questions such as, did he behave like a war criminal?

He breaks a bit of news, offers a tutorial on hard lessons learned and bends over backward to explain himself.

He's not apologizing, mind you. That's not what this is about. As he stares into the camera, tears well up. But he's just explaining a few things.

So he explains. And explains. And explains some more. And before long the Bob McNamara of 2003 starts looking like the Bob McNamara of 1965. All that's missing are the charts and the pointer. The words are precise, the logic seemingly unassailable. Every decision had its reasons. But as you listen to McNamara talk, you begin to wonder: At what point does all this explaining begin to sound like the workings of a guilty mind? And if McNamara is wracked with guilt, does he even know it?

"My wife compares Bob McNamara to the Flying Dutchman -- the person destined to travel the entire world looking for redemption," said Morris."I would say he's traveling the world looking for some kind of understanding of himself."

Besides, Morris said, it's harder to analyze an error than apologize for it.