Fahrenheit 9/11

Michael Moore is an innovative filmmaker. People seem to either love or hate is work, but no one is apathetic about him. He creates public debate about topics like outsourcing, corporate greed, America’s gun culture, and the 9/11 aftermath. Here Michael Moore does it again this time stirring the pot about George Bush’s presidency and his administration’s agenda and actions after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. There has been a lot of debate about this film and about Michael Moore himself and to that I say ‘yay’! Whether you agree or disagree with Moore’s opinion you cannot ignore that he has touched on a hotspot in this election year. It took a long time to write this review because it is difficult to distance oneself from opinions about Moore himself and his (and my own) political views. Personally I think that anything that promotes this type of discussion is good regardless of how biased or self-serving the film may be.

It is rare that a new form of film is defined. There were the Hitchcock films, a genre defined by suspense and masterful use of space and camera. In the past twenty years I can only think of two other directors whose name has become so synonymous with a style that they have created. One is the Ken Burns documentary, heavy on still images and voiceovers, bringing historical documentary to life. The other is Quentin Tarantino creating the stylized graphic novel film. Michael Moore should be added to this company. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a documentary, but only because no classification currently exists to aptly name this film. Moore does take historical information, but he tears it out of context and uses only those pieces that support his claim. The main reason this cannot be called documentary is because it lacks objectivity. No human work is truly objective, but Moore does not even attempt to make objectivity apparent, in fact he revels in the glory of spreading his own voice and his own opinion to the world.

In Fahrenheit 9/11 Moore deals with the thorny issue of the Bush Administration’s reaction to the devastating terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. The most moving and effective portion of this film occurs with no image on the screen at all. The violence of the terrorist attacks is replayed with only a sound track from that fateful day. This makes the attacks all the more personal as each person in the audience can re-experience this common remembrance of what they heard and what they saw, and where they were when the towers fell.

Moore raises some interesting issues, did politicians read the Patriot Act before they voted it into law, what have its broad powers been used for, and how does it affect everyday Americans? Why were a number of high-ranking Saudis including members of Osama bin Laden’s family allowed to leave the US after the attacks when all commercial travel was suspended? What is the makeup of the American Army these days when only one member of Congress has a child in Iraq and yet small towns are sending a large percentage of their youth? What kind of links do large companies like Halliburton have to the current administration and are they using those relationships to their advantage? Moore makes suppositions about these questions but provides little real proof one way or another.

The majority of the film is devoted to Moore’s personal attack on George Bush. He shows Bush sitting quietly reading to children in the aftermath of the attacks and scorns the president’s reaction. Would he have been happier if GW had gone running around in circles panicking while waiting for his entourage to arrive? And though there are many assertions that there are significant links to big business and the oil business there is little evidence given. In fact Moore succumbs to the very stereotyping that he scorns at the airport by trying to shock the audience by showing high ranking and well known officials of both Bushs’ administrations meeting with unidentified men in Arab garb. Are we to expect that if they look like Arabs they must be tied to terrorism? It is a stereotype that panders to the masses that Moore hopes to draw to this untraditional documentary.

Moore provides the most interesting story line in a mother who sent her children into the military to earn the way to an education and a better life. This woman put her faith in the US military and its path to a better life only to have her son killed in a war without clear aims. As expected she feels betrayed and angry, her journey brings the argument of Moore to a very personal point. In addition there is significant footage from soldiers in Iraq, but of the prisoner abuse scandal, and of troops discussing why they are in the desert and what they hope to accomplish. In general there seems to be an air of uncertainty, these soldiers don’t know why they are in Iraq, they just want to go home safely.

This is now the highest grossing documentary ever due mostly to an aggressive slam campaign by the right that thrust the film into the mainstream and made it a hot button political draw that became the must-see movie of the summer. In general this film serves to produce more of Moore’s sensationalism in political commentary. He himself calls it an opinion piece not a documentary and rightfully so. Much of Moore’s work has been just as skewed to his opinion but more controlled and more focused. I highly suggest renting the far better Bowling for Columbine or Roger & Me.

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1. Movies in a year of politics