EntertainmentNutz Feature

Fahrenheit 9/11

Release Date: June 23, 2004 (NY; wide release: June 25)
Studio: Fellowship Adventure Group, Lions Gate Films, IFC Films
Director: Michael Moore
Screenwriter: Michael Moore
Starring: Michael Moore, George W. Bush (archived footage)
Genre: Documentary
MPAA Rating: R (for violent and disturbing images and for language)
Official Website: Fahrenheit911.com

Plot Summary: "Fahrenheit 9/11" is Michael Moore's reflections on the current state of America, including the powerful role oil and greed may have played after the 9-11 attacks. In this provocative exposé, Moore tells the one story no one has dared to tell as he reveals the events that led the US into that apocalyptic September 11th moment and why the country is now at war. The film won the Palme d'Or, the highest award of the Cannes film festival.

 His social protest has made a resounding gong. The content is debatable, the form a manipulation on the audience’s emotions, and in the election year an attempt at procuring your vote, but Moore makes his stand audaciously when others would simply duck for cover. That’s been part of the problem according to some, but he’s clear enough not to be misunderstood.

 Moore has taken current events in America to fashion an editorial about the rise of George W Bush to power. Except Bush’s rise does not literally mean that he has ascended, at least in Moore’s estimation. Moore’s interrogation of the Bush files including his business ties with the Bin Laden family, a rigged Florida 2000 election vote, and false pretences on the war against Iraq amidst a climate of fear to stimulate public support, proves that he is manipulating media images to present the decline of an American President. His satire on the president and the Bush administration sometimes results in a painfully humorous documentary.

 The links that Moore makes between political and social events in recent USA history are passionately taken from his bosom onto the screen where he offers his argument and charges of hypocrisy with a determined, bold and untameable zeal, and unintimidated by congress and the White House.

 The possible dangers with being right is that he has fired so much ammunition at the dummy audience that they have been hit in the head, their brains far removed from their bleeding hearts. Fahrenheit 9/11 paints a picture that is easy to side with because it plays on our sense of fair justice and Moore is quite the likeable little man hero who exacerbates that tension.

 It’s funny, yes. It has also got pathos, honesty, and poignant statements about the human condition which will move audience response. The point is political and ideological. If for no other reason we full heartedly embrace this film it will because we agree with Moore’s politics.

 But it asserts the right of the American people in view of corrupting power plays in the U.S. Government. In this sense it is prophetic like the outing of Nixon in the Watergate scandal of the 1970s. Could George W Bush be another fallen president? Is Moore the modern day equivalent of those two Washington Post reporters who used their interrogative powers to unravel the shameful truth? We shouldn’t be surprised.

 The genius of this is that it has taken the defrocking to the streets where the attitudes have been divided but one strand has been emphatic with Moore’s sentiments. Popular in the U.S and overseas (in France the film won the top prize at the Cannes film festival, a country who did not support the war with Iraq) it is eye opening about American involvement in Iraq, the perceived attitude of the American Government as extending its power base inviting distrust of the world’s most powerful nation. It’s hit a prevailing feeling and nerve among liberals and people in the middle ground. Who’s been manipulated now, Moore asks. He alerts use to whom we can trust if we can’t trust the most prosperous economy and land in the world.

 If Moore is wrong, so be it. His story is far fetched, even if only on the facts but not in the tone of his humanity when he stands with the poor, marginalised, and families of soldiers. If he is right about the facts then an enquiry into the presidency is the logical outcome.

 A rational enquiry can arise in the viewer’s mind after watching this film if they wish to enquire further and explore the issues. If they do, Moore’s intentions to persuade has either been successful or a failure. This depends on whether rationality will figure in their assessment and whether they will be persuaded intellectually through Moore’s emotive film technique and voice over narration.

 Moore has been criticised for not being balanced, but his documentary approach is legitimate. It has been done before, but not to the scale of public and media attention as this. This film doesn’t have to be divisive. It can be the catalyst to further truth seeking. Yet that can often be problematic when fallible human beings are involved, like Moore, the President and his associates, particularly since Moore is as beloved or berated as the shaggy, cagey doofus, as Time magazine writer Richard Corliss described him, snooping around at the inconvenience of others in what is like a subversive comedy routine.

 Fahrenheit 9/11 lets people ask questions, prompting them to think. Moore has done a service in offering this by letting the status quo be challenged. If people are thinking about these issues that’s the power of the medium – the documentary form - at such a time. Moore could be making the most politically audacious comment to a wide audience in decades, although its power to persuade will stand the test of time. The question is whether the evidence will prove Moore the prophet or the misguided, and that answer may never be fully satisfied.