"Think about it: How does Morris get such penetrating interviews if the interviewee is just looking at a camera? If they're looking into the lens and not at Morris, it would be hard for Morris to get anything like the unsettling, revealing, startlingly personal interviews that are Morris's bread and butter. Would you tell a flat piece of glass about the biggest mistake you ever made in your life?"
This is formulated to sound as convincing as possible without any evidence, but I don't buy it at all. The recent documentary "Human" is full of heart-rending interviews of people having emotional breakdowns and looking straight at the camera. I'm quite sure they did not use any such mirror system. You can occasionally see the interviewee glancing sideways at the interviewer, but if anything, it seems that talking to a camera gives them the strength to talk about personal things in an unusually powerful way. (Disclosure: I know some people on the production team and have done a bit of work on their website)
I'm a massive Morris fan (so much so that I've read about this contraption before), and while I've only watched a few minutes of the documentary you linked, I do think that the interview style is different. It's not just about talking to the camera, but rather about talking to the camera as if it's human - McNamara, for instance, regularly wiggles his finger at the camera, as if he's lecturing to you in your seat. Toss in the fact that Morris regularly shouts his questions or comments from somewhere off to the side - probably somewhere across the same room, as dictated by the way that this system works - and there really is an unsettling way that it feels as if you are the focus of what is happening, with the SecDef during the start of the Vietnam war and your crazy shouty uncle over for dinner.
It's just so hard to articulate how it feels, and I'm sure the effect doesn't work on everyone as well as it does on me. Errol's movies have changed my opinions on both McNamara and Rumsfeld, though, and that's a phenomenally tall order (and, I think, speaks to how vividly human he can make his interview subjects).
I'd seen both of them as something like a character out of House of Cards - Rumsfeld in particular as a obviously corrupt and power hungry man (my opinion of McNamera going in was, I guess, somewhat more nuanced).
Their respective documentaries, though, provided believable human motivations for what they were trying to do. I'm pretty convinced that both men harmed the world in serious ways, but I'm also pretty convinced that both genuinely meant well - which somehow makes me both sympathetic to them and a little frightened at the same time.
This is formulated to sound as convincing as possible without any evidence, but I don't buy it at all. The recent documentary "Human" is full of heart-rending interviews of people having emotional breakdowns and looking straight at the camera. I'm quite sure they did not use any such mirror system. You can occasionally see the interviewee glancing sideways at the interviewer, but if anything, it seems that talking to a camera gives them the strength to talk about personal things in an unusually powerful way. (Disclosure: I know some people on the production team and have done a bit of work on their website)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdb4XGVTHkE