A simple review,from a poster in IMDB.
Summary: THIS IS NOT A DOCUMENTARY.
Bowling For Columbine was the highest grossing feature length
documentary ever made when it was released in 2002. Fahrenheit 9/11
made more money in its first weekend than Bowling For Columbine's
gross. Needless to say, the release was a massive media event, and
conservatives, particularly those in radio, are fighting to be the
first to denounce Michael Moore and anything he does or stands for.
One radio talk show host, Lee Hewitt, I think, even went so far as to
call Fahrenheit 9/11 something of a Rorschach test, 'Anybody who liked
anything about this movie clearly is an idiot' type of thing. It's
really sad to see how badly they want everyone to look the other way.
'This movie is propaganda/a pack of lies' (Limbaugh). 'This movie is a
test of your mental capacity' (Hewitt). 'The movie was SHOT badly'
(Michael Medvet). 'Michael Moore is a liar' (everyone). Some even
dubbed it astoundingly unentertaining and boring, an absolutely
impossible assertion regardless of your political standing. You know,
no matter how much you hate Michael Moore, it's hard to argue with
video evidence. And by the way, Mr. Medvet, that 'grainy' look was
there because you were looking at what is called stock footage.
Unproduced, unedited, uncleaned, unpolished. Best not to comment on
the technical aspects of a medium about which you clearly know
virtually nothing.
That being said, I can understand a lot of the criticism that the
movie is receiving. There's a part in the movie, for example (this is
probably the part that receives the most glaring criticism) in which
we see a montage of Iraqi children jump-roping and singing and whatnot
before the war. When I saw that part, the first thing that popped into
my mind was, 'My God, why would Michael Moore arm his critics with
such a sequence?' Of course, the SECOND thought that popped into my
mind (note that there was more than one), was that this is a mixture
of Moore's quite often obnoxious sense of humor and his tendency to
show things that tend to get hidden, usually purposely.
We know that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, that he ran an
oppressive regime, that he killed his own people, etc. What people
don't seem to get is that Moore is not saying that it was all singing
and dancing and sweet happy cheer in Iraq before Bush took us to war
there, but he was showing that those things did in fact exist in Iraq.
If you think that Michael Moore expects his audience to believe that
living under a dictator like Hussein resembled a trip to Disneyland,
see the Rorschach comment above. Disagree with them all you like, but
liberals are not drooling idiots, and Moore knows this. You look at
the news media, on TV and in the newspapers, even from the very mouth
of our own president, and you hear about absolutely NOTHING but
killers and evildoers and murderers and mass graves and weapons of
mass destruction and torture chambers and rape rooms, seemingly from
people who believe that Iraq in its entirety is a torture chamber.
True, Hussein ran a brutal regime, but that was simply what life was
like for Iraqis. They don't understand freedom after so many years of
oppression, and the notion that we could go over there and inject a
democratic government into a country that has lived in oppression for
so many decades and think that everyone is going to live happily ever
after loving America and Americans forever and ever is MUCH more of a
Rorschach test than whether or not you liked even a single thing about
Fahrenheit 9/11.
Is it too much simply to show that there was some level of
normalcy at some levels in Iraq? And as far as being partly a result
of Moore's obnoxious sense of humor, I am referring to the sense of
humor that led him to hypothesize about what was going through Bush's
head in the first minutes after being told of the attacks, or that led
Moore to sneak up on Charlton Heston and unexpectedly ask for an
apology for the families of the Columbine victims for holding an NRA
meeting in Columbine shortly after the Columbine shootings. You could
argue with the idea that, based on the footage of Bush in that
classroom after being told about the attacks, he was clearly clueless
about what to do. There is even footage of him with his head down in
that children's book and his eyes are darting around the room as
though he's afraid someone's looking at him. His vacuous expression is
indeed unsettling.
But here is the thing that has to be kept in mind when analyzing
this movie from any political standpoint, THIS IS NOT A DOCUMENTARY.
Michael Moore himself has explained that Fahrenheit 9/11 is not a
documentary, but more of an editorial piece in which he presents HIS
OPINION of a variety of facts. Context is dangerously absent at many
points in the movie, but the important thing to realize is that it is
entirely based on FACTS. Michael Moore has considered offering a
$10,000 reward (see the July 12, 2004 issue of TIME magazine) to
anyone who can successfully disprove a single FACT (NOT opinion) in
his movie. Given that, Mr. Limbaugh, the assertion that the movie is
'a pack of lies' is either propaganda in itself or pure, unfiltered
idiocy.
In Moore's defense, he shows a surprising and much appreciated
amount of restraint, playing only the audio over a black screen of the
September 11th attacks, sparing us from seeing the catastrophic images
that he knows we don't need to see yet again. He also largely
disappears from the movie himself, taking a sharp turn from his heavy
presence in his previous works, such as Roger & Me, the television
show 'The Awful Truth,' and Bowling For Columbine, probably because he
knows he is taking on a much more touchy issue and had best let the
facts speak for themselves. Notice, for example, that as soon as he
appears in the movie, he can't resist walking up to various government
officials and asking them to enlist their own children in the war in
Iraq.
Michael Moore is so determined in his opposition to Bush that he
slips up at times, but the larger picture presented by his movie is
impossible to ignore. We see a disturbing sequence which describes how
much more money the Bushes receive from powerful and wealthy Saudis
than from American taxpayers, and thus where their loyalties may lie,
although this is at odds with the Saudis opposition to the war in
Iraq. Even so, the embarrassing extent of Bush's verbal ineptitude is
a difficult thing to ignore, especially when we compare his delivery
of immensely intelligent speeches, clearly written by his teams of
speechwriters, and the disquieting spectacle of Bush Unplugged which,
as they say, is quite a thing to behold.
If you hated the movie, fine. There's no reason that people should
not be allowed to disagree with Moore's film or his political views,
or even to simply not enjoy it (although opposite political views are
pretty much required for lack of at least some level of enjoyment).
But for crying out loud, don't make such outlandish and moronic claims
as that the movie doesn't inspire debate, is nothing but lies, or is
pure cinematic trash. I've heard all of these from people speaking
into a broadcasting microphone, and it's really disheartening to see
how closed-minded such people are. If you hated the movie, don't watch
it again, if you hate Michael Moore, don't watch it at all and just go
out and vote for Bush. That's how you get your revenge against Michael
Moore, vote for Bush because Moore wants nothing more than to get him
out of office. If, on the other hand, you are able to think for
yourself, watch the movie and take from it what you will. Believe what
you want, don't believe what you don't want, but don't blindly pretend
that Fahrenheit 9/11 is completely negligible just because of who made
it or because it presents a decidedly left-wing point of view. No
matter how you feel about it, there are some serious problems with the
American government pointed out in this movie to which everyone should
pay attentio
