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By PAUL BRENNER
Just in time to wreck havoc
(hopefully) upon the upcoming Presidential
election, Columbia Tristar has released Michael
Moore's incendiary political documentary,
"Fahrenheit 9/11," on DVD. The film was the first
documentary to win Best Picture at the 2004 Cannes
Film Festival and deservedly so. Politics aside,
"Fahrenheit 9/11" is one of the few films released
this year that creates excitement, emotion, and
involvement in the viewer. A successful film is
supposed to arouse and astonish and this
"Fahrenheit 9/11" does so throughout its 122
minute running time.
Moore's film is loaded with freight from the
Republican disinformation squad (even now the fix
is in from conservatives in their anti-Moore
commercials and late-breaking films attempting to
discredit Moore as a footnote to their anti-Kerry
rhetoric). But if the rewind button is pressed and
the world turns back to 2002 and 2003, you realize
what a truly brave stance Moore has taken in
getting this film off the ground.
As a survivor of the World Trade Center attack in
New York on September 11 and as a television
viewer during the week after the attack, glued to
the television set and looking for clues, this
reviewer spent most of the early days amazed at
the political vacuum, with Bush in absentia and
Cheney spirited away to undisclosed locations.
Nevertheless, the nationalistic drumbeat began
almost immediately, along with Giuliani's
patriotic exhortations to support the country by
shopping. It was in this climate that patriotism
became the last refuge of a scoundrel and the
Republicans solidified their political base at the
expense of the WTC families. Democrats rowed the
oars along with the Republicans and dissent was
considered traitorous.
In this climate of fear with politicians of all
political stripes bathing in the same stagnant
pool, the only voices of criticism emerged from
the comics and the satirists (not only Moore, but
Al Franken, The Daily Show, and Letterman among
others). Aside from France, U.S. political
satirists filled the void and became the loyal
opposition.
Moore, clearly impassioned, focused all of his
resources into "Fahrenheit 9/11," a film which
makes no pretense of objectivity (as if any
documentary can really be called impartial and
objective). If anything, Moore (influenced by
Orson Welles' cinema essay "F. For Fake")
continued along the lines begun with "Roger and
Me," "The Big One," and "Bowling For Columbine" --
a take-no-prisoners cinematic blog.
In "Fahrenheit 9/11," Moore cannily downplays his
pushy-fat-guy-in-a-hat persona, relying instead on
voiceover narration and news footage to carry his
message across. Moore clearly conveys in the film
his sense of anger by and danger in Bush's
deceptions and he deliberately reduces his own
screen time to permit the Republicans to hang
themselves. Unlike the mainstream media in the
United States, Moore does not give the Republicans
the benefit of a doubt, holding the government
accountable.
To be sure, Moore throws everything but the
kitchen sink into the film, as if Bush will get
re-elected and Moore will end up getting thrown
into the camps with all the other liberals and
he'll never get another chance.
In "Horse Feathers," Chico Marx remarks, "Who you
gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?" And the most
effective aspect of "Fahrenheit 9/11" is seeing
the Bush camp shooting themselves in the foot with
their own ineffectiveness and lies. The most
shocking aspects of the film charts such visual
documentation as Bush's seven minute
immobilization reading "My Pet Goat" to youngsters
in a Florida school after getting word of the
World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, the
August 6, 2001 security briefing documents on "Bin
Laden Determined to Attack the United States," the
sequence charting the whisking away of twenty-four
of Bin Laden's relatives and 118 other Saudi's on
9/11 when all air transportation in the United
States was grounded. These sections of the film
paint a very bleak picture of the U.S. government.
There are also portions of the film in which Moore
goes off on tangents that don't quite make sense
and do not fit in with the film's thrust. These
are sections on Harken Oil, the Unocal Pipeline
through Afghanistan, Moore's irritating interior
monologues, the diversion concerning Oregon's
one-man border patrol, and Moore's obligatory
appearance driving around in an ice cream truck in
Washington D.C. reciting the Patriot Act to
passing congressmen.
But Moore quickly regains the upper hand in a
strong final third as he charts the governmental
fueling of a climate of fear in the country (in a
brief redux of his "Bowling for Columbine" theme);
the contradictory justifications for the claims of
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and Iraq's
ties to Al Qaeda; the sham of The Coalition of the
Willing (or as Rumsfeld calls it "the Mother of
all Coalitions") with such powerful countries
supporting the United States as Palau, Costa Rica,
Iceland, Romania, the Netherlands, Afghanistan,
Hungary and Bulgaria; the uncritical U.S. media;
and the emotional political journey of Lila
Lipscomb, a Flint, Michigan mother who loses her
son in the Iraqi war and converts from a good
Republican to a bitter and questioning American.
And to be sure, there are still hilarious moments
peppered in the film. There are many quotable
Bushisms -- "There's a willingness [of Saddam
Hussein] to terrorize himself"; "A dictatorship
would be a heck of a lot easier, no question about
it"; and "This is an impressive crowd -- the haves
and the have-mores. Some people call you the
elite. I call you my base." There is also the
stunning clip of Bush crisply addressing
television cameras calling upon everyone to "stop
this terror" before, after the sound bite is over,
telling the reporters, "now watch this drive" as
he tees off. But nothing tops the nutty and
chilling tune "Let the Eagle Soar" as sung by
singer/songwriter John Ashcroft.
For viewers willing to open their minds (instead a
washing their brains) past the "fair and balanced"
Fox News pabulum, "Fahrenheit 9/11" is a moving,
emotional, and eye-opening experience. The film is
not perfect and it has its faults, but it gets an
A+ for clear-eyed bravery in a sad and repressive
time.
Special features include clips on the release of
"Fahrenheit 9/11," an eyewitness account by
Swedish journalist Urban Hamid embedded with
Charlie Company in Samarra, Lila Lipscomb at the
Washington D.C. premiere, Iraqis on the eve of the
invasion, retirees patrolling Florida waters
looking for terrorists, footage outside Abu Ghraib
prison during a prisoner release, Condoleezza
Rice's testimony with the 9/11 Commission, Bush's
press conference after being questioned by the
9/11 Commission, additional scenes, and a
hilarious segment with Arab-American comedians
("Welcome to The Axis of Evil Tour"). |
