This past weekend I watched the latest Errol Morris documentary The Unknown Known (2013) about former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. (Unknown knowns in Rumsfeld-speak means the things you thought you knew, but didn't.)

I'm a big fan of Morris' earlier Oscar winning documentary Fog of War about another former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. McNamara is interesting because he is grappling with how he could have made better decisions. What I felt was brilliant about this film was the way Morris provided the context in which McNamara was working. His milieu, including the intellectual fads of the day and the personalities and events orbiting around him, and how this shaped his decisions. The result was gripping.

In The Unknown Known, Rumsfeld keeps his armor up almost all the way through. There was little context - maybe Morris thought this unnecessary as the events are so recent. The format was almost a mirror of the one Morris used in Fog of War. The result was a bit boring.

Portraits are more revealing when they show how the character and the milieu come together to make the tragedy. I think there was something more interesting to say here.