One fun thing about being a man is the goofy conversation subjects that inevitably surface when you're among each other: What is your plan for the inevitable zombie apocalypse? Who would win in a fight between a gorilla and a tiger? How would've Bruce Lee fared in the UFC? Every man I know has a precise opinion on these hypothetical issues and debating them never gets old. At least not for me. What would you do if your dad was in the CIA could've very well joined that list of masculine debate scenarios, except that it happened for real to Carl Colby, the son of ex-CIA director William Colby and he shot a documentary title THE MAN NOBODY KNEW about his father. It's kind of awesome to have a CIA dad, but it's disqualified as a manly debate subject because Carl Colby gave us a good idea of what it's like already.
THE MAN NOBODY KNEW is sort of an homage by Carl Colby, to a father he never knew all that well, so the movie is centered around his career and his family is always just satellite, they seem to just happen to be along. William Colby kind of had an awesome life that got gradually more complicated over time, promotions and cultural revolutions. Colby was an OSS spy in WWII and was tasked with blowing up bridges and railway lines in order to stop Nazi progression in Scandinavia, he was an undercover agent in post-war Italia, in charge of containing the spread of Communist ideology through the country (one participant said Colby was almost single-handedly responsible for the economic boom of 1960s Italy) and became CIA's deputy chief at the start of Viet-Nam war, where life got complicated for him and everybody else in the government.
Carl Colby never judges his father for being who he was. He obviously love him very much and THE MAN NOBODY KNEW is often defensive of him, which I don't have a problem with, philosophically speaking. His father was trapped between the two highest callings for a man, per se, serving his nation and raising a family. The cosmic order of awesomeness would want that he aced both task, but William Colby was never really torn between both worlds, at least not in the portrait his son draws of him. He got married and had children because it's what men did, back then and he needed to blend it. He never did wrong by them (except maybe when he unexpectedly divorced his wife towards the end of his life), but they just happened to be there. They were a necessity to a job that consumed him.
Badass.
The case of William Colby explores the idea that badass people are kind of selfish. In order to completely master your field of expertise, you have to become one with it, you have to let it submerge your personality, you ambitions and your future, and that's what William Colby did. He gave everything to the CIA, leading a handful of people that truly loved him as witness of his legacy (I wouldn't dare use the word sacrifice here). The pursuit of excellence is a demanding mistress, which William Colby gladly went to bed with.
I would've loved to hear more about the death of Colby's daughter, though. I understand why it was kept out of the movie, Carl Colby deemed it an intimate tragedy that had nothing to do with his father's legacy, but I beg to differ. THE MAN NOBODY KNEW draws conclusions from an event that it barely discusses and I would've loved to have more insight on it, on how it affected William Colby, especially late in his life. It may not be the viewer's business, but it's part of a complicated man's life that THE MAN NOBODY KNEW obfuscates. Why would Colby's daughter start mattering to her after she passed? Why didn't it prompted him to get closer to his remaining children?
I guess there is also a political point to THE MAN NOBODY KNEW: no matter how awesome a man can be, if he slips a finger in the political machine, he's going to become prey to the irrational , conflicting expectations of the masses and will end up reviled and disgraced. It's kind of a right wing statement, but it's not irrational. It's the observation of a man who witness his smart, loyal and hard-working father being swallowed by a controversy that was infiinitely bigger than him and turned into a vulgar scapegoat. THE MAN NOBODY KNEW was, I believe, meant to be intimate and emotional, but ended up being a nuanced, cerebral portrait of what happened to a prototypical American hero after a paradigm shift in values. It'll prompt some manly discussions about the nature of badassery in our culture, for sure.