Life Less Literary

I read the following earlier in Cloud Atlas, in the second half of the Sonmi~451 thread:

How did you feel about such a role in a terrorist organisation?
The greatest trepidation; I was not genomed to alter history…

Accompanying the quote was a large and recent feeling of déjà vu; I racked my brains and racked again, trawling back through the book, knowing that this must be one of the many recurrent themes woven into the six stories. It didn’t seem to fit anywhere in the other narratives though.

It was only when I put the book down and returned later that I realised I hadn’t heard it in the book. Very similar words (albeit without the bit about genoming, obviously) cropped up in the film The Fog of War, which I went to see yesterday. Robert McNamara had been president of Ford motors for some ridiculously short period of time, I think five weeks, when President Kennedy offered him the role of chief treasury officer or, failing that, defence secretary. McNamara responded that he had no training for the job, to which Kennedy replied “do you think there’s a school for presidents?”

I love it when cross-source synchronicities like that crop up. It’s something I’ve been noticing a hell of a lot lately, as I’ve had more and more books on the go at the same time - leaps from Stendhal to something on Radio 4 to Herodotus to something spotted in the British Museum to… Reminds me that not only is it a small, small world after all. It’s also a small, small history and a small, small pool of ideas.

The film, by the way, was excellent. A fascinating documentary with great insights and scary parallels, from LBJ saying “we are fighting a war against tyranny and aggression” (so America has had at least 40 years experience of fighting abstract nouns) to McNamara saying “we must win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people” to the uncanny facial resemblance (right down to the specs) between McNamara and Colin Powell.

Then McNamara says “we saw Vietnam as part of the cold war. They saw it as a civil war. We were wrong”.

Well filmed too, and the Interrotron makes for compelling eye-contact viewing. During interviews, McNamara’s face fills the screen so that you can watch his unwavering stare as he talks of killing thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or the tears welling in his eyes as he recalls JFK’s burial. And inbetweentimes, the Philip Glass music and slo-mo/fast-mo photography makes you wonder whether the film should have been subtitled McNamaqatsi.

Funny, until a couple of years ago I wouldn’t have dreamed have going to the cinema to watch a documentary. Now, after being hooked on the likes of this, American Splendour and the absolutely incredible Dark Days (get the DVD: the “making of” is even more mindblowing than the film itself) I almost can’t be bothered to go and see fictional films any more.

(BTW, as ever all the quotes quoted here are straight from my memory, not straight from the source. Please don’t quote me on these quotes).