Review of The Unknown Known (2013) by Gordon B — 01 Jun 2014

Not sure if it was the freezing air conditioning on my head or the relentless self-justification of Donald Rumsfeld that has frozen my brain. OK - I have better understanding of Rumsfeld's "Unknown Known" statements, from which the film takes its title but little more is known about him that refute one's prejudices and expectations.

The film lets Rumsfeld speak almost as many words as he sent memos during his long and multiple tenures in office under 4 Presidents, but only once does he show his recollections to be plainly "incorrect". If you want a Frost/Nixon or a Tom Cruise/Jack Nicholson (A Few Good Men) moment, forget it! You can see from his performance why he clung onto the greasy pole for so long. Rock-solid disingenuity.

There were some interesting facts and footage included:

1. Dick Cheney used to be Rumsfeld's assistant (as he pointed out more than once).

2. A taped Nixon, Haldeman, Kissinger conversation about Rumsfeld that ended with Nixon saying "we'll dump him after this". Sadly (for Nixon), he got dumped and DR went on to be Secretary of Defense (sic) - for the first time - in Gerald Ford's government.

3. DR was a candidate for Vice President when Ronald Reagan ran in 1980. Reagan chose George H W Bush. If he had not.......!

4. GHWB did not include DR in his government but his son did (probably at Cheney's behest).

5. Footage of the evacuation of Saigon showed helicopters being pushed off aircraft carrier decks so others could land.

Errol Morris's earlier parallel film was "The Fog of War" - about Robert McNamara. The final paragraph of the BFI film notes sums up the difference in the quality of both films and subjects:

"The Fog of War and The Unknown Known are a strikingly matched pair, one of a modernist masterpiece, the other dizzyingly post-modern. Robert McNamara's testimony in the first film offers the satisfactions of a genuinely deep and penetrating self-analysis, and that's obviously because he came from a world where there were clear distinctions between right and wrong, good and bad, success and failure - words that at one time actually meant something and had real personal consequences. Rumsfeld in contrast belongs to a world in which there is no real accountability, either public or private, in large part because words can be bent to mean anything, or nothing. The proof of this in The Unknown Known amounts to a valuable if tremendously damning commentary on our current political culture.".

Perhaps in this film, Errol Morris just let Rumsfeld talk and hang himself.