FAHRENHEIT 9/11 d: Michael Moore
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
Direction and screenplay: Michael Moore.
THE BURNING BUSH
While criticizing U.S. president George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, documentarian Michael Moore was greeted by several loud boos at the 2003 Academy Award ceremony. Not long afterwards, Moore decided he was gonna show ‘em who was right. And show ‘em he does with his polemical, Palme d’Or-winning documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, which relies on interviews, news articles, and footage edited out of newscasts to create a fierce and relentless indictment of the Bush government, its corporate backers, and the (corporate-owned and -controlled) American media.
Fahrenheit 9/11 begins with a dissection of the 2000 U.S. presidential election, in which Al Gore won the popular vote via the ballot box but George W. Bush won the White House via his brother’s Florida and his father’s Supreme Court pals.
From there, Moore uses the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to depict the long-standing close ties linking the Bush dynasty to Saudi Arabia’s Royal House of Saud and Bush’s use of terrorism as a weapon of dissent destruction. Among other topics found in Fahrenheit 9/11 are the distortions used to justify the war against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the plight of an American mother whose son dies in the fighting, the thoughts of American soldiers stationed in Iraq, and the bloody destruction caused by the American and allied bombing of that country.
Moore also aims his camera at greedy corporations and at the American media. The former group is lambasted for its eagerness to profit from the ravages of the Iraq war, while the latter is criticized for its cowardice — e.g., burying stories deemed too controversial — and for its docile acquiescence of the White House’s political agenda.
Moore’s attacks are particularly effective when he makes use of his caustic humor. Besides George Bush, he ridicules the American political system, the American electoral system, the American media, big corporations (especially Halliburton), several of the U.S. allies in the Iraq war, and pop singer Britney Spears.
Now, even though much of what we see in those sequences is, in fact, funny, informative, disturbing, and thought-provoking, Moore also sees fit to include unnecessary — and unproven — conspiracy theories, e.g., the Afghan war as a convenient means for Unocal to build a pipeline through that country. That is an unfortunate decision that undermines the picture’s overall credibility.
Moore also loses ground when he attempts to personalize the war. Although some private moments are quite touching, Michael Moore, The Interviewer, comes across as both patronizing and exploitative. Additionally, for someone who’s been so critical of the cowardice of both the Bush administration and the U.S. media, Moore lacks the courage to blame American military personnel for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. (He shifts the full responsibility for the heinous acts to George Bush.)
And even though Moore points his accusing camera at so many targets, he never directs it at the millions of Americans who have thoughtlessly adhered to the dictates of the White House. Instead, I’m-a-Man-of-the-People-Just-Like-You Michael Moore takes the stand that poor, little, innocent We-the-People have been duped by the big, bad Elite.
Yet, despite its flaws, Fahrenheit 9/11 is a landmark motion picture. Like the great tragedies (or your average soap opera), it deals with power, greed, lies, love, loss, corruption, ignorance, good, and evil — with the difference that its characters are real people.
To boot, the documentary even offers a new movie monster, more frightening than Alien, Predator, or even The Thing. No, not George W. Bush, who comes across more like Larry, Moe, or Shemp than Freddy Kruger. Fahrenheit 9/11’s Frankenstein is Britney Spears, whose blind follow-the-leader mentality is representative of a large section of the human population. And that makes her scarier than any other movie monster of past or present.
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Tags: Britney Spears, Documentaries, Fahrenheit 9/11, Film Reviews, George W. Bush, Iraq War, Michael Moore, Political Movies, Three-Star Movies
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