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Fahrenheit 9/11
****
October
27, 2004
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. USA.
122 minutes. Written, narrated and directed by Michael Moore. Produced by
Jim Czarnecki, Kathleen Glynn & Moore. A documentary featuring Michael
Moore, George W. Bush, Lila Lipscomb, Donald Rumsfeld, John
Conyers.
Once upon a time there was a mayor in a famous
city, who summed up George W. Bush by saying he represented "everything that
is repellent in politics". This is not the kind of comment that encourages
polite debate, and it sounds like a throwaway phrase, but think about the
image of an ugly politician and tick off the features that would qualify,
and it's hard to see where Bush falls short.
He stands for nepotism, being the son of a former
president, having walked into office through family connections and name
recognition. Corruption, in the way he was elected, and how he has been connected
to Halliburton and Enron. Hypocrisy, when he decided his gimmick was the
label "compassionate conservative", after coming to fame as the Texas governor
who put Karla Faye Tucker to death. He said "there needs to be a certain
accountability in our society" as the reason for supporting stricter drug
laws, when he is a former alcoholic and cocaine user who won't officially
admit or deny his drug use and won't go through the twelve steps. He did
the rich boy's tour in the National Guard during Vietnam, and even then went
AWOL; now he says Vietnam was a well-intentioned mission on America's part
and shows no reluctance to get all he can out of the armed forces of
today.
Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11"
builds one fact on top of another until it becomes a defiantly sober
pile of evidence at a time that could prove urgent in American history.
Shattering the image that Bush's handlers have been trying to put across,
it dives into taboos and wells of emotion that the American media has been
staying far clear of. "This film validates cinema," said the actress Tilda
Swinton when it won the top prize at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, meaning
that the artistry of movies has the potential to go where self-censored,
corporate-intimidated TV networks do not, especially when government is trying
to convince citizens that it is unpatriotic to dissent against the
state.
There is a technique called the Big Lie, which
states that while a normal untruth can be shot down directly, an outrageous
invention takes on a reality of its own -- it requires the totality of truth
as a counterpoint, and that takes a lot of facts and effort. If for the past
four years we have been subjected to the Big Lie that George W. Bush is a
compassionate conservative, a successful businessman, and a hardworking and
decent man despite his intellectual flaws, who is doing his best to fight
a real war on worldwide terrorism… well, "Fahrenheit 9/11" is 122 minutes
of an alternate point of view, trying to point out the totality of the
truth.
After its opening credits have rolled, we hear
the sounds of the attacks of September 11. We do not see, only hear: The
images have become over-familiar, archive footage rather than murder, and
hearing the crashing and the screaming over black, the reality of the suffering
grabs hold of us anew. Moore is of course the narrator and director of this
documentary, and in the wake of this shock, he takes us through his story:
George W. Bush, his family and his government have considerable ties with
the Saudi Arabian government, but rather than use them to help track Al Qaeda
or unearth the colleagues of the mostly Saudi hijackers from 9/11, Bush did
everything he could to stop the Saudis from being embarrassed and hijack
America's grief to cut down civil liberties and launch a pre-planned, irrelevant
war on Iraq.
That is the summary. The full list of the facts
can already be found on the internet, and they can be absorbed in the film,
which is not only a compelling dossier of scandalous information but an
extraordinary emotional experience: There is the politics and convolution
of the first half, and the sheer visceral trauma of the second, which takes
us into a war zone where American troops despair, Iraqi civilians find their
homes devastated and their children blown to pieces, and where, in one extended
subplot, Moore follows the tale of a woman named Lila Lipscomb, a Michigan
mother whose patriotism never wavers but whose faith in her government does,
when her son ends up getting dead in Iraq after sending a letter home confiding
"I hope they don't re-elect that fool".
Moore is present throughout this, sometimes appearing
on camera (there is the famous scene where he and a Marine try to get members
of congress to sign their kids up for the war), mostly providing a voice-over.
He is more subdued and less of a prankster than in "Roger & Me" or even
"Bowling for Columbine". The scenes that work the least are when he tries
to inject his characteristic humour and prevent the mood from becoming too
grim; yes, there is a horrific gut-laugh as John Ashcroft sings a patriotic
composition of his own called, um, "Let the Eagle Soar", but it's a cheap
shot when Moore skims over the Iraq coalition; he suggests it was made up
of countries like Morocco, without mentioning Australia, Britain or
Japan.
The most effective moments come when the tone
is quiet and factual, presenting information, asking indignant and logical
questions. Those who claim Moore is an egotist or a boorish jerk have had
ammunition in the past, and the key right-wing website Moorewatch has a
psychologically dubious but superficially professional-looking article on
how Moore is just a show-off and his popularity represents a culture of
narcissism. That debate is an easy one to win (let's start by asking who
is more narcissistic: Michael Moore or George W. Bush?), but it is not for
now. Those who want to use Moore's loudmouth persona as an argument against
this movie are sidestepping the material. Because, isn't that accurate footage
of tens of thousands protesting Bush's inauguration on an ominously rainy
January afternoon? Can't we see Bush reading 'My Pet Goat' at a photo-op
in a classroom full of Florida schoolchildren, for seven whole minutes, after
he had been told the nation was under attack? Isn't that the FBI terrorism
expert saying that helping Bin Ladens and over 100 other Saudis out of the
country after September 11 was unhelpful for proper procedure, and isn't
that Richard Clarke, Bush's own original counter-terrorism official, saying
that on Sept 12 Bush gave him the impression, "in a very intimidating way...
that he wanted us to come back with the word that there was an Iraqi hand
behind 9/11 … he didn't ask me about Al Qaeda." Hadn't top Taliban officials
been to see Bush in Texas when he was governor, and didn't they visit the
US State Department in 2001? Can't we see Colin Powell in February 2001 saying
that Saddam Hussein "has not developed any significant capability in relation
to weapons of mass destruction", and can't we see Bush say a whole lotta
times in the run-up to war that "He's got 'em!", and isn't he now saying
that it doesn't even matter?
The movie opens on election night 2000, asking
"Was it all just a dream? Did the last four years really happen?" Again,
I'd say it's not just a throwaway use of a rhetorical device; it sums up
what we've been feeling if we've been paying attention since the turn of
the millennium -- not just a numb, terrified state of disgust, but of denial
and disbelief, like things couldn't really be as serious as they seem, as
the United States of America got taken over in a bloodless coup, the inarticulate
son of a president who got voted out of office in another era was installed
in the White House, his administration wavered between international disregard
and domestic incompetence, and was then given credence by an event whose
horrifying symbolism played like a cross between Pearl Harbor and the Reichstag
fire.
"Fahrenheit 9/11" captures a moment in time and
will be watchable years from now; in its final moments it puts the events
of the last few years in a depressingly universal context. It is also important
for now, when America gets a chance to vote, and declare whether it has been
duped by a criminal collection of Christian fundamentalist neocons or it
has not, and will fight for its core values and break free of duress. The
seriousness of the tone is a reflection of all the pain that happened in
September 11 and the extent to which it was exploited to cause more pain
in Iraq; it is also an implication by Moore that he doesn't need to be onscreen,
serving as a heavy hand, when the facts are shocking enough to speak
for themselves.
This became the highest grossing documentary in
history in the space of one weekend; theaters across America refused to enforce
the R-rating, and the families of 9/11 victims and Iraq soldiers have pointed
to it as an encapsulation of everything that is causing their anger. Me,
I have been mired in depression for months and haven't reviewed anything
since March, but before the election, when there may still be people who
haven't seen this film, who may have been scared off it through Fox propaganda,
I have to add my word to the chorus, because every vote counts this year,
and we who are pushing this film are not exaggerating -- it really is that
potentially important, and it really is that good. For Moore, it is a validation
for years of pounding at the new American right; from "Roger & Me" in
1989, when he was a guy scraping overdrafts together to fund a documentary
about what the economy had done to his home town, to now, when he is an
international celebrity, and cinema's standard-bearer for activism, he has
come along way. I don't know how much he has let it go to his head, but he
has not lost the faith, and "Fahrenheit 9/11" is an artistic masterpiece
and a hopeful political act.
COPYRIGHT©
2004 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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