Here is complexity, clearly set forth. Not easy to do! And at the end of all of the analysis, depth of feeling. This is really fantastic stuff. Mr. McNamara is some paradoxically thorny/responsive, formidable subject. He, and Morris’s film too, offer all sorts of very valuable lessons. One is that though obviously there are great difficulties in the world, our knee-jerk dismissal or condemnation of public servants is often really inappropriate. They have impossible, essential jobs to perform, and they try to do so. Removing one’s self for the sake of scruple may be the noble, Socratic option, but then what are we left with? The fact is that good men have to do the dirty work, and they get dirty in the process of so doing.
Beyond that, there’s almost nothing more invigorating, more cinematically exciting than an important subject, intelligently rendered.