|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Fahrenheit 9/11 review
2004.07.04 — Entertainment | Movies | Movie Reviews | by Andrew Cole
|
Moore ambushes a member of Congress outside the Capitol. [official site] |
I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 (international title: 488 Centigrade) last weekend when it opened, but it was sold out... twice. The theater was still pretty full this weekend, for an early matinee in a largely Republican state. The film, by documentarian Michael Moore, is better than I thought it would be (I am not a fan of Moore's boorish style) but not as good as I had hoped.
For one thing, as a documentary, it is a failure. It doesn't really document anything. It's a long (2+ hours) diatribe against George W Bush that has prescious little to say about the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (thankfully, he even spares us the footage of planes hitting the towers, which by itself deserves praise).
Moore returns to the 2000 election whenever he's at a loss, it seems, and it doesn't help much. |
It has a lot to say about Iraq. And the 2000 election. And the PATRIOT act. And the 2000 election again. It's quite disjointed. Moore returns to the 2000 election whenever he's at a loss, it seems, and it doesn't help much. It was certainly a shameful moment in American democracy, with regard to both politics and the news media, but it had nothing at all to do with 9/11. Zilch.
Moore never explains why no Democratic senator (such as, off the top of my head, Joe freakin' Lieberman) was interested.... |
And some of the election material is pointless. Moore shows us House rep after House rep (members of the Congressional Black Caucus) trying to lodge a protest against voting irregularities in the joint session that confirmed the 200 election result. Al Gore (as president of the Senate) turns them down one by one because they don't have a signature from a senator. Moore never explains why no Democratic senator (such as, off the top of my head, Joe freakin' Lieberman) was interested in signing on. It's obviously just a planned symbolic act, but Moore presents it as if it were a disgraceful conspiracy.
To his credit, Moore doesn't engage in too many underhanded editor's tricks (he does display idyllic footage of children in Baghdad before the invasion... followed by huge explosions). But he also doesn't present us with many administration claims answered with facts that refute them. We see clips of Condi Rice, Don Rumsfeld, and others making wild claims, but Moore mostly just assumes we've been watching the news enough to know that no WMDs were found in Iraq and that the occupation has gone badly.
Moore does offer some moments of comedy, altho they tend to be something you might find on a "political bloopers" video you might see on latenight TV. Ashcroft sings that terrible song he wrote! Rice primps for the camera! (Who doesn't? Well... Moore probably doesn't.) Bush looks stammers and stares dumbly! (Well, he's got you there, Mr. President.) These are funny enough to make you laugh, but they aren't the "gotcha moment" laughs that the Daily Show with Jon Stewart consistently produces, like GWB debating himself (as candidate and as president) over whether or not troops should be used for nation building.
Moore makes no real case as to why the Saudis are bad people for the Bushes to pal around with. |
Moore spends a lot of time laying out the relationship between the Bush family and the bin Ladens and other Saudis. But Bush made no secret about his friendship with the Saudis during the election, and Moore makes no real case as to why the Saudis are bad people for the Bushes to pal around with. Perhaps he's relying on our innate distrust of Arabs (it certainly feels that way) or the one brief scene of a nasty criminal execution in Saudi Arabia (a public beheading shot from a great distance). I know the Saudi government is a brutal, Islamic fundamentalist, oil-soaked autocracy, but a lot of people don't, and Moore doesn't properly demonstrate it.
Moore's case for the president's detachment is a better one. |
Moore's case for the president's detachment is a better one. He details how George W Bush spent a lot of time on vacation before 9/11, and how he made surprisingly weak attempts to catch Osama bin Laden. One of the most damning scenes is the president frighteningly saying that he doesn't know where bin Laden is and "I just don't spend that much time on him."
The infamous five or more minutes that Bush spent with children in the classroom on 9/11 rather than bowing out and taking care of business is another damning scene. Moore nearly ruins it by clumsily speculating about what the president was thinking.
f e e d b a c k
Respond to this page by your e-mail client. Please be sure to mention the title of the article.
