First up from TIFF, the new Errol Morris documentary, a worthy (if inferior) companion to The Fog of War that finds another defense secretary who presided over a military disaster. To see Rumsfeld, so close to the wars that have yet to fully cease, smiling and justifying himself provokes a special kind of rage, yet what really stuck out watching his benign support for war on the thinnest grounds was how much the unlearned lessons of Rumsfeld's tenure seemed prime to take us into yet another conflict. Since this review was filed and published, America's seemingly inevitable move into Syria has been thankfully stalled (at least for the moment), but The Unknown Known still seeps into the skin as a glimpse not only into the self-delusion that made the first stage of the War on Terror possible but into the lingering insanity that may lead us into the next era of it.
My full review is up at Film.com.
