Review: The Unknown Known
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
[Grade: B] Errol Morris' feature-length conversation with Donald Rumsfeld may turn out to be a pivotal point in his career, not because it's a breakthrough but because it feels like the end of the line.
MAN OF ICE: Errol Morris fails to crack Donald Rumsfeld's calm facade in his new documentary.
City Paper grade: B
Errol Morris’ feature-length conversation with Donald Rumsfeld may turn out to be a pivotal point in his career, not because it’s a breakthrough but because it feels like the end of the line. Over the last couple of decades, Morris has increasingly put his faith in the Interrotron, a kind of invisible question-asking machine that allows his subjects to see his face while looking directly into the lens. The idea, as workshopped on his TV show First Person and apotheosized in The Fog of War, is to remove any apparent obstacle between his subjects and the lens, creating the illusion of direct interface with the audience and letting us, in effect, peer into their souls.
In Rumsfeld, however, Morris has met his match, and possibly more than that. What Morris has affectionally called the “shut the fuck up” school of interviewing — let people talk, and eventually they’ll tell you everything — works with a conflicted subject like Fog’s Robert McNamara, but Rumsfeld’s placid surface barely ripples. Let Rumsfeld talk, and he will tell you exactly what he wants you to hear.
Morris seems to regard Rumsfeld as a kind of warped philosopher king, distributing his pensées to the Bush White House in the form of white papers nicknamed “snowflakes," although the frequency of their dissemination more often evoked an avalanche than a gentle flurry. Like Bob Woodward, Morris has traded inquisitiveness for access, as if we haven’t already had ample opportunity to hear Rumsfeld justify himself. It’s a give-’em-enough-rope approach, but Rumsfeld slips the noose like an escape artist.
In Mr. Death, Morris focused on a figure even more odious than Rumsfeld: a Holocaust denier. But there, he felt a moral imperative to point out the holes in his subject’s story. In The Unknown Known, he just lets Rumsfeld’s smug rationalizations drone on. Those who’ve made up their mind on him will find plenty to buttress their views — no matter what they believe.
