Film Review
Fahrenheit 9/11
Anyone who dares to stand up, anyone who has not been cowed into silence and made to feel like a traitor for having a “differing” opinion is a hero, if not a saint to me.
What is a “Liberal” anyway? The right would have us believe that liberals are “anything goes” types that would not oppose the use of drugs in schools and can never make up their minds about anything. To which I would reply no, liberals are people who try to look at all the different points of view and make up their own minds. Is that hard to do? Does it make things more confusing? Does it prevent facile one idea answers? You betcha. In other words, when John Kerry is considering all options and is accused of “flip-flopping” that’s what’s going on. And we are meant to prefer a president who has one idea and sticks by it as being the preferable arbiter of our future.
I read over a dozen of the hundreds of articles about Fahrenheit 9/11 before going to see it and considered myself well prepared. Turns out I wasn’t and here’s the reason why. I wasn’t looking for Moore to come out as a left wing equivalent to Sean Hannity or Anne Coulter. I needed to hold him up to a higher standard and desperately wanted him to deliver without using their insidious tools. It’s easy to see how Republicans have managed to savage this film and will continue to do so, because Moore uses the same tools.
The result? I came out loving Moore’s passion and point of view, but deeply suspicious of his methodology. Do I trust Michael Moore to tell me the truth?
In, to me, one of the key scenes of the film, Moore interviews a mechanic in Flint about how the Republican campaign of fear has well, scared the crap out of everyone. His reply is that he doesn’t trust people he does not know and a few seconds later, he adds that he doesn’t even trust people that he knows. And I do not trust Michael Moore to tell me truth. I am tired of people trying to coerce my opinion in a certain direction. I want someone, anyone out there to give me both sides of the coin and have enough faith in my intelligence to determine for myself who to vote for, or as the case might be, against.
Let me explain. There are many scenes in Fahrenheit 9/11 in which Moore assumes that we will side with him without his bothering to give us the full facts. He does this by manipulating images and sound bites. The technique is simple and effective. He makes a statement and backs it up so that we agree with his conclusion. Then he makes a slightly different statement, but does not fully make his case, as in “well, if you agreed with me on this, you will on this and that, and one more…”
For instance when he makes the case that the Saudi and Bin Ladens were/are in cahoots with the Bushes, he so builds up the emotional momentum that by the end we are simply left with shot after shot of one of the Bushes, or some other administration official, shaking the hand of “an Arab”. Now, due to the rapid build up we immediately assume that this is a Bin Laden or an “evil doer” member of the Saudi Royal family, but do we really? Or is it just some hapless Arab doing the hand shake thing. The trouble is that by the end of that scene we are led to assume that every Arab on screen (we are never given their names) is a bad person. Wasn’t using cultural stereo-types one of the things Moore accused the Government of doing?
Another case. On several occasions Moore elects to make a point by using sound-bites like “Bin Laden” or “Weapons of mass destruction” as quoted from Bush, Cheney etc. speeches, to hammer it home. Though I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, a fast cut of Bush saying “nukilar” or Cheney “WMD” is out of context, I need to know the whole sentence to be able to make up my own mind. Someone saying “WMD” does not immediately qualify them for Satan’s hall of fame.
Having said all that, there are some moments of sheer brilliance in the film. For instance the footage of the Marine recruiters chasing blue collar kids (white collar ones are far less likely to join up!) in run down shopping malls and coercing them into joining up is astounding. Or, did anyone know that Bush’s motorcade came to a halt on the way to the inauguration and was pelted with eggs by thousands of demonstrators, making it impossible for him to do “the walk”? Where was CNN on this? And I am a news junkie.
The overall effect? It did not really tell me anything new about Bush that I did not know or had not suspected. It gave me an interesting and moving insight into some of the victims of his arrogance, both here and in Iraq. Above all it allowed me to form a clearer opinion of Michael Moore the person, as reflected in his work. I am glad that he is there to give the Republicans a taste of their own medicine, but I really wish that he had managed to retain the moral upper hand in doing so.
Do I trust Michael Moore to give me the news “fair and balanced”? No. He is just another guy trying to influence my vote by any means possible as we head for system overload and shut down into November.
Did this just qualify me for a phone call from Chris Lehane?
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First Published at WriteMovies.com
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