going in i expected this to be psychologically terrifying, and it was, but there are also a few viscerally terrifying sequences when they’re speaking to the kids at the camp that i didn’t expect. during these they added some score and did some quick cuts but i think they should have kept it simple. for me at least it was really painful to see the kids crying - i had to look away and detach a time or two. it was really surprising cause up until then everything seemed so extreme that it was just funny. the talks about global warming and intelligent design made me laugh i guess cause i’m so removed from that debate. then she blesses the electrical system and banishes the devil from her powerpoint presentation and she’s just a cartoon. but once the kids looked scared and were crying it really hit me.
when i first learned about joseph kony and the lra i thought he was basically david koresh-ish but in a place where there are no institutions to stop him. but this woman seemed like an institutionalized and validated kony here. then she flat out says she took her inspiration from hamas and how they indoctrinate kids for suicide bombing. her anti-humanist statement in the radio interview of how children can’t make choices was very cold.
overall the film’s not great. the cinematography is very good, but it felt incomplete. they started to touch on a bigger picture with the colorado springs preacher but needed a little more. just putting up the ‘30 million’ stat and saying he talked to bush and his people every week made me a little skeptical. a scholar/journalist talking head type that could fill in some details here would have been nice. and the radio scenes were really not appropriate. they put it in to basically show their side but it’s totally unnecessary, added nothing, and was just too inconsistent from the rest of the film. the interview she has with him is important, but stay with her for it. this was done by the same people as boys of baraka, and i had similar complaints about that but there also found the subject incredible.
There is an interesting balance in documentaries between the content and the construction. It seems like these guys do a good enough job choosing their content that it makes up for some weaknesses in their construction. I would say that if you have good content then you just get out of the way, but I felt like that approach went too far in Fog of War.
Left by nate on November 8th, 2006
boy you really have it out for fog of war. you should write errol morris an angry letter.
i probably overstated my issue with their construction - just a minor stylistic quibble.
i think my main issue with them is their scope. both this and boys of baraka i wanted to know more. 2 documentaries in 2 years is really prolific so they probably make a strict schedule and just cut themselves off at a certain point. pretty much any interesting story you could pull a hoop dreams and follow for 7 years but it seems like they could find a balance to flesh these out a little more.
Left by Unfrozen Cavedan on November 8th, 2006