Overall Rating
 Awesome: 51.71%
Worth A Look: 25.23%
Average: 4.98%
Pretty Bad: 2.49%
Total Crap: 15.58%
14 reviews, 237 user ratings
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| Fahrenheit 9/11 |
by Collin Souter
"Tell me Moore, tell me Moore..."
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“Fahrenheit 9/11” opens beautifully with the major players in the White House (Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rice, etc.) getting prepped, made-up, mic’d and straightened as though they’re about to walk onto a stage and deliver a speech that has been rehearsed a dozen times over, but we know something they don’t. Some of their speeches and actions will be chopped up and edited out of context in order to fit the agenda of a liberal activist not afraid to hold back his punches. They should probably watch what they say, but when dealing with grand scale issues on a daily basis, they’re not going to take into consideration the fact that the truth-spinner of “Roger & Me” is watching and taking notes. After all, a good actor never reads their reviews.I find it ironic that this hot-button movie with this opening should come out mere days after the death of actor/former President Ronald Reagan. According to “Fahrenheit 9/11” filmmaker Michael Moore, the performance of the actors in the White House has never stopped. Like Broadway’s “Cats,” the veteran actors must eventually pass on their roles to younger, more athletic performers who can ably fill the same space. Not every performance will go as planned. Some houses will be better than others. Some will hate the show, others will support it and, like “Cats,” it will never, ever make sense or go away.
Neither will Moore (go away, that is). I guess I should say that I do like Michael Moore’s work, though I have grown a bit more cynical about it over the years. I do fall on the side of the left, but more and more when I watch a Michael Moore movie, I realize that he has the power to manipulate just as the people in the White House do and that he stands guilty of perpetrating the same tactics as those in the media he attempts to condemn. Yet, because I agree with much of what he says, he nevertheless has the knack for pushing the right satirical buttons in order to get me to enjoy his movies. Not everyone will be as lucky.
I would rather not go off on what I consider fact and fiction in “Fahrenheit 9/11,” although I will say that with this film, Moore has left little room for attacks from those who wait on the sidelines to catch him in a lie. He cites his sources more clearly than he ever has before. He shows us the headlines as proof. He makes his case. As a documentarian, he has a problem staying focused and lingering too long on issues that carry little importance or further exemplify a point he has already made abundantly clear. Like “Bowling For Columbine,” this movie starts to unravel towards the end, trip over and repeat itself.
Take, for instance, the sequence involving the state troopers in Oregon. Moore makes the point that post-9/11, our shores have been patrolled by nothing more than a part-time security officer. The sequence goes on to explain that the offices where he works has a dinky little phone that only works part-time and that many calls go unanswered or ignored. This is supposed to support the argument that the government has been lying to us about the tightened security of the U.S. shores against possible terrorist infiltration. It seems unnecessary since Moore has already made the point about bad security through the stories of confiscated breast milk and how four books of matches on a flight is okay, but five is not.
Moore also unfairly uses the 9/11 footage of President Bush in the elementary school classroom as his staff informs him of the second plane crashing into the second Tower. Bush stayed in the classroom for eleven minutes while reading “My Pet Goat.” I, for one, don’t take issue with this the way Moore does. I can’t help but ask myself what I would do in this situation. Do I run out of the classroom in a panic? Do I abruptly drop the book, tell the children the roof is on fire and we ain’t got no water? Or would I sit, try to put on a calm face, leave it to the teachers and parents to break the news to the children and try to take in the overwhelming information just handed to me? Moore seems to know what he would do, but I personally do not. There is no question that Moore is out to get Bush, but I’m not sure this tactic is the best way to do it.
Finally, there’s a woman from Moore’s hometown of Flint, Michigan. She has just lost her son in the war in Iraq and puts a flag out on in front of her house every day as an act of duty and sincere respect for those who gave their lives before him. At one point in the film, she sits with her entire family and reads out loud his last letter to her before he died. She cries and wonders how our government could put so many like him in harms way in the name of outright lies. It’s a touching and heart wrenching moment, but Moore pushes it to the extreme in a scene that comes later when she visits the White House to cry some more. Someone walks by declaring the whole scene as “staged.” I certainly don’t doubt the woman’s pain. I just question Moore’s decision to belabor his point. The scene doesn’t feel staged so much as exploitative and unnecessary.I try to look at all documentaries, propaganda or not, as essays. I’m not of the opinion that all documentaries should be objective, unbiased or even fairly balanced. Documentaries should not, in my opinion, be held to the same rules as print news journalism. They are personal works made out of passion and idealism. I know this from personal experience. That Moore stacks the deck in his favor in every one of his films should always be taken into consideration when watching them, but that’s why he put his face on every one of the posters. “Fahrenheit 9/11” represents another chapter of The World According To Michael Moore and nothing else. This essay may not be as strongly written as “Roger & Me,” “The Big One” or “Bowling For Columbine.” He still knows how to hold the reader spellbound, but even David Mamet needs an editor.
 del.icio.us 
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=10127&reviewer=233
originally posted: 06/30/04 12:24:22
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OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2004 Los Angeles Film Festival. For more in the 2004 Los Angeles Film Festival series, click here.
This film is listed in our political documentary series. For more in the Political Documentary series, click here.
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USA
23-Jun-2004 (R)
DVD: 05-Oct-2004
UK
N/A
Australia
29-Jul-2004
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