MovieChat Forums > The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2004) Discussion > Cut-and-paste

Cut-and-paste

posted 16 years ago by CaeserOct0
6 replies | jump to latest

Something I didn't understand (although which doesn't detract from the point of the movie) is that there seems to be a lot of cut-and-paste editing in the film. What I mean is there are several parts where R.S.M. will start talking and it will be clear there was no linearity in what he was saying. The following is just an example but probably not an actual line from the movie.

"We firebombed Japan...into submission...by killing 40,000 people in one night." Now those could be 3 separate sentences but they are spliced into one and in a really obvious way. Was this cutting does to be succinct?

Nevertheless, it is still a brilliant movie that people who have the potential to lead any country into war (or already have) should watch and learn from so that we as humans do not keep making the same violent mistakes.

====================================
http://www.cafepress.com/vmans_shop

[–] sandrock41 16 years ago

Yes we watched this today in class and I couldnt help but notice all the edits. Wasnt sure if what I was hearing from him was actually what he said.

[–] danieloneill 16 years ago

It seemed to be a stylistic editing choice I think, because what he was saying made perfect sense.

[–] Quankers 16 years ago

The editing was done in such a way as to cut to the meat of what was being said by McNamara. I have not heard of any complaints from McNamara on the issue of being misrepresented by the documentary. Ultimately however, I saw this as a style issue. This is a talking heads documentary. Most likely Morris was just trying to make the film more dynamic. Same goes with the unconventional framing of the shots.

[–] utstimpy 16 years ago

personally my guess was that Robert McNamara is a slow speaker. He reminds me of my grandpa...although some sentences come out quickly, a lot of them contain lots of pauses as that old brain grinds away the gears. I think Morris did it to save time. The pauses were probably only 1/4 or 1/2 a second each, but you add that up over 90 minutes of him talking, and it would add up to several minutes.

[–] Diedo 16 years ago

I made an amateur documentary myself, which included interviews with people of McNamara's age, or older. In my case, I made similar editing decisions to edit out any pauses (which tend to be frequent for older people) and showed them as such in cases where I didn't have any relevant photographic or videomaterial to hide these cuts with, or where I thought what was said was too important to leave out the facial expressions.

[–] simonhowson 16 years ago

This is Morris being reflexive.

He is showing that you can cut parts out, without stopping a person from expressing what they actually think.

This is a reaction to documentary filmmakers who think adding cuts some how makes a documentary less truthful. Morris is showing that a cut doesn't change the essence of what is being said.

He also uses it to comment back on the way McNamara always wants to add qualifications to everything he says!