Fahrenheit 911: Documentary. Directed by Michael Moore. (R. 125 minutes).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The big moment in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" comes midway through the documentary, and there's no mistaking it: It's the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and the president of the United States is sitting in a little chair in a Florida classroom. His chief of staff enters and whispers in his ear that the country is under attack. And President George W. Bush just sits there for seven long minutes.
In a forceful documentary devoted to puncturing the image of the president as a take-charge leader, this will be, for many, the tipping point. At the very least, it will be the scene that everyone talks about. Moore doesn't show the whole seven minutes. Instead he lingers on the scene just long enough for the audience to daydream of Eisenhower, Reagan, Truman, Bush senior, Clinton, Nixon or Kennedy in that situation, and to imagine any one of them standing immediately, excusing himself and demanding to be put in touch with his national security team.
Assessing the merits of a political film is a tricky business. Obviously, its quality is partly a function of its power to persuade, but its persuasiveness is in the eye of the beholder. Yet there are other things to consider: The movie's passion. Its serious purpose. Its tone. Its mix of words and images, and the way both linger in the mind. There's the way the movie fashions its arguments, and the cumulative effect the experience provides -- what you feel walking out, what you think about the next day. By all these measures, "Fahrenheit 9/11" is Michael Moore's best film.
Certainly, it's a career landmark, the film that signals his transition from political entertainer to political thinker, from propagandist to idiosyncratic journalist, from colorful gadfly to patriot. If "Bowling for Columbine" was a step, this is a leap, in which Moore vaults past Will Rogers into some territory all his own. In the 90-year history of the American feature film, there has never been a popular election-year documentary like this one.
The film, which won the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, has a single unifying idea that brings together its various elements. The idea is an emotional one, namely that America has been living in a kind of nightmare for the last few years, one that began not with the events of Sept. 11, 2001, but from the moment that the networks took Florida out of the Gore column on election night 2000. Moore posits that the main source of America's nightmare has been the presidency of George W. Bush. There's anger at the core of Moore's position, but he never shows it. And while he sprinkles the film with his deadpan humor, for the most part he plays it straight, laying down facts methodically, trusting in the audience's interest and attention. The connection between the Bush family and the bin Laden family's oil interests dominates the first section of the film. Although Moore doesn't uncover anything sinister, the sheer extent of this personal and financial connection comes as a surprise, and it fuels Moore's outrage that the bin Laden family was allowed to leave the United States without interrogation following Sept. 11.
That Moore is becoming an artist is evident in the way he depicts the World Trade Center attacks. Instead of going to stock news footage, he blacks out the screen and makes us listen to the sounds of Lower Manhattan on the horrible day. It brings it all back. From there, Moore challenges the president's handling of the war on terror by bringing in experts to say that the Afghanistan war was "botched," that too few troops were sent. He details lapses in homeland security. To bolster his case that the administration has fostered a culture of fear, he goes to a tiny town in Virginia and talks to citizens on the lookout for terrorists. When asked what the terrorists might want to bomb, several locals say, "The Wal-Mart."
Moore had a camera on the ground in Iraq, and the footage he got is like nothing seen on American television. A woman sobs and screams that her family's house has been destroyed. American soldiers clown around near hooded detainees, while other soldiers express doubt about the mission. Moore's effects are manipulative in the best sense -- even though the audience knows what he's up to, the moments still have power. As the president talks about the need for war, Moore shows kids playing in Baghdad. Later, he shows a boy lying in the street with his forearm barely attached to his body. On the home front, Moore shows a mother whose son was killed in Iraq, reading her son's final letter -- in which he says that he hopes the president isn't re- elected.
Moore is playing for keeps. The somber tone notwithstanding, this film is on fire. It's an exhausting, shattering thing to watch, and the mood it casts lasts for days. What both exalts the experience and grounds the picture is Moore's essentially patriotic faith that a sincere, invested argument can get a hearing in America. To see "Fahrenheit 9/11" and experience its passion is to wonder why there haven't been popular political films like this since movies began, and from all points of view. It seems like such a reasonable use of cinema, and an inexpressibly worthy one.
-- Advisory: This film contains strong language, gun violence and scenes of carnage.
Mike LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The big moment in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" comes midway through the documentary, and there's no mistaking it: It's the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and the president of the United States is sitting in a little chair in a Florida classroom. His chief of staff enters and whispers in his ear that the country is under attack. And President George W. Bush just sits there for seven long minutes.
In a forceful documentary devoted to puncturing the image of the president as a take-charge leader, this will be, for many, the tipping point. At the very least, it will be the scene that everyone talks about. Moore doesn't show the whole seven minutes. Instead he lingers on the scene just long enough for the audience to daydream of Eisenhower, Reagan, Truman, Bush senior, Clinton, Nixon or Kennedy in that situation, and to imagine any one of them standing immediately, excusing himself and demanding to be put in touch with his national security team.
Assessing the merits of a political film is a tricky business. Obviously, its quality is partly a function of its power to persuade, but its persuasiveness is in the eye of the beholder. Yet there are other things to consider: The movie's passion. Its serious purpose. Its tone. Its mix of words and images, and the way both linger in the mind. There's the way the movie fashions its arguments, and the cumulative effect the experience provides -- what you feel walking out, what you think about the next day. By all these measures, "Fahrenheit 9/11" is Michael Moore's best film.
Certainly, it's a career landmark, the film that signals his transition from political entertainer to political thinker, from propagandist to idiosyncratic journalist, from colorful gadfly to patriot. If "Bowling for Columbine" was a step, this is a leap, in which Moore vaults past Will Rogers into some territory all his own. In the 90-year history of the American feature film, there has never been a popular election-year documentary like this one.
The film, which won the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, has a single unifying idea that brings together its various elements. The idea is an emotional one, namely that America has been living in a kind of nightmare for the last few years, one that began not with the events of Sept. 11, 2001, but from the moment that the networks took Florida out of the Gore column on election night 2000. Moore posits that the main source of America's nightmare has been the presidency of George W. Bush. There's anger at the core of Moore's position, but he never shows it. And while he sprinkles the film with his deadpan humor, for the most part he plays it straight, laying down facts methodically, trusting in the audience's interest and attention. The connection between the Bush family and the bin Laden family's oil interests dominates the first section of the film. Although Moore doesn't uncover anything sinister, the sheer extent of this personal and financial connection comes as a surprise, and it fuels Moore's outrage that the bin Laden family was allowed to leave the United States without interrogation following Sept. 11.
That Moore is becoming an artist is evident in the way he depicts the World Trade Center attacks. Instead of going to stock news footage, he blacks out the screen and makes us listen to the sounds of Lower Manhattan on the horrible day. It brings it all back. From there, Moore challenges the president's handling of the war on terror by bringing in experts to say that the Afghanistan war was "botched," that too few troops were sent. He details lapses in homeland security. To bolster his case that the administration has fostered a culture of fear, he goes to a tiny town in Virginia and talks to citizens on the lookout for terrorists. When asked what the terrorists might want to bomb, several locals say, "The Wal-Mart."
Moore had a camera on the ground in Iraq, and the footage he got is like nothing seen on American television. A woman sobs and screams that her family's house has been destroyed. American soldiers clown around near hooded detainees, while other soldiers express doubt about the mission. Moore's effects are manipulative in the best sense -- even though the audience knows what he's up to, the moments still have power. As the president talks about the need for war, Moore shows kids playing in Baghdad. Later, he shows a boy lying in the street with his forearm barely attached to his body. On the home front, Moore shows a mother whose son was killed in Iraq, reading her son's final letter -- in which he says that he hopes the president isn't re- elected.
Moore is playing for keeps. The somber tone notwithstanding, this film is on fire. It's an exhausting, shattering thing to watch, and the mood it casts lasts for days. What both exalts the experience and grounds the picture is Moore's essentially patriotic faith that a sincere, invested argument can get a hearing in America. To see "Fahrenheit 9/11" and experience its passion is to wonder why there haven't been popular political films like this since movies began, and from all points of view. It seems like such a reasonable use of cinema, and an inexpressibly worthy one.
-- Advisory: This film contains strong language, gun violence and scenes of carnage.
Mike LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle.
