Alternative Film Guide

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 documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, possibly the director’s most personal film to date.

Moore is on particularly solid ground as long as he sticks to 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 Iraqi war, and pop singer Britney Spears. But 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 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.

Synopsis:

Relying on interviews, news articles, and footage edited out of newscasts, Michael Moore’s unabashedly partisan piece of agitprop, Fahrenheit 9/11, is a fierce and relentless indictment of U.S. president George W. Bush, of his corporate backers, and of 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 set up a demonstration of the long-standing close ties linking the Bush dynasty to Saudi Arabia’s Royal House of Saud; the means by which Bush has turned terrorism into a weapon of dissent destruction; 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 Iraqi war, while the latter is criticized for its cowardice — e.g., burying stories deemed too controversial — and for its docile acquiescence to the White House’s political agenda.

DVD:

Fahrenheit 9/11 Region 1 DVD (U.S. / Canada/ U.S. territories) release date: October 5, 2004.

Features:

List price: US$19.94.

A Columbia / Tristar Home Entertainment release.

FAHRENHEIT 9/11 - Notes

LA MALA EDUCACIÓN / BAD EDUCATION

SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE

MIVTSA YONATAN / OPERATION THUNDERBOLT

THE HOURS

THE INSIDER

THE FAMILY STONE

HOTEL RWANDA

KINSEY

THE DOOR IN THE FLOOR

THE LETTER (1940)

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