“THE UNKNOWN KNOWN” My rating: B (Opening April 11 at the Screenland Crown Center)
103 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13
Who the hell is Donald Rumsfeld, anyway?
I mean, I know he has been a career public servant since the Nixon administration, a bureaucrat with unmatchable survival instincts. I know he’s served as Secretary of Defense under two presidents, that he was one of the major creators of the War on Terror.
I remember being in awe of Rummy for his passive/aggressive handling of journalists during the Iraq war – he could engage in a seemingly affable conversation while giving the unmistakable impression that he considered all reporters to be idiots bent on wasting his time.
Was I amused at his disdain for a free press? Outraged? Both, actually.
But, inside, who is this guy?
I had hoped for answers from “The Unknown Known,” the latest documentary from Errol Morris. A few years back in “The Fog of War” Morris turned his camera on Vietnam war architect Robert McNamara, and the result was an Oscar-winning study of a once-powerful man haunted by his mistakes.
So perhaps Morris would work the same sort of magic on Donald Rumsfeld?
Dream on. For starters, the word “mistake” may not even exist in Rumsfeld’s vocabulary. His admitting to one would be a sure sign of the End of Days.
As is the standard format for one of these Morris efforts, the subject talks directly into a camera while the unseen director asks questions. Frequently the film cuts away to TV news footage, still photos, and newly-shot arty/atmospheric passages that serve as visual cues throughout the documentary.
I had hoped that Morris would really put Rumsfeld’s feet to the fire regarding Iraq, torture, and Guantanamo Bay. And the filmmaker does try to pin his subject down.
But Rumsfeld is a maddeningly elusive target, a worm that twists and flexes and uses its natural sliminess to frustrate the fisherman who would pierce it with a hook. He has an astounding ability to evade while giving an impression of absolute honesty and openness.
Asked by Morris if he thought there were any lessons learned from our involvement in Vietnam, Rumsfeld answers: “Some things work out. Some things don’t. That didn’t.”
As for whether invading Iraq was the right thing to do, all he’ll say is “Time will tell.”
Apparently questions of right and wrong have little place in Rummy’s world. And as for second-guessing his own decisions … well, that’s a pastime for lesser beings.
Given Rumsfeld’s reluctance to reveal much of himself, Morris has focused on the “snowflakes,” the thousands (literally) of memos (so-called because they were distributed on white paper) written by Rumsfeld throughout his career. Rumsfeld blizzarded his subordinates with these snowflakes, many of which he reads aloud in front of the camera.
“I wanted everyone to know what I was thinking,” he explains – though it feels less like revelation than a way of controlling underlings.
What’s remarkable about these snowflakes is that they show an obsession with language and offer a pseudo-philosophical analysis of words and their meanings.
Rumsfeld wrote at length about terms like “guerrilla war” and “unconventional warfare” — what each implied, how they differed, and the context in which they should be used by administration officials. Here was a guy expert at controlling his own conversations, and determined – behind a grandfatherly, affable pose – to control what everybody else says, too.
It is in one of these “snowflakes” that the term “the unknown known” pops up. Rumsfeld defines it as “things you think you know that it turns out you don’t.”
Which is a pretty good summation of Rumsfeld himself.
Perhaps the biggest reveal in “The Unknown Known” comes from the fact that Rumsfeld agreed to appear in a film by a left-leaning documentary maker.
At the end of the movie Morris asks Rumsfeld why he’s doing this, and after a bemused pause, Rummy answers: “I’ll be darned if I know.”
But I’m not buying it. I think Donald Rumsfeld wanted to prove that he could march into the lion’s den and emerge unscathed. He doesn’t lose his temper. He doesn’t break a sweat.
It’s his way of proving that he’s made of sterner stuff than that pussy McNamara.
| Robert W. Butler
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