June 2004

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Michael Moore’s new movie, Fahrenheit 9/11. Naturally since it opens this Friday in wide release, I’m not the only one.

Stephen wonders if people are going to go:

Make no mistake; there hasn’t been this much controversy around a movie since The Passion of The Christ, and we all know what a flop that was. While of course Moore doesn’t have pastors and reverends across America standing up in their pulpits telling their congregations that if they don’t go see a particular movie, well, then they’re just gonna go to hell, he has the media telling us there’s every reason in the world to go. And not to go, of course.

You know my view – or if you don’t, welcome to the site. You should see it. If nothing else so you can argue with the facts to hand in the months ahead, because there’s nothing that annoys me more than people who argue about stuff without knowing shit about it.

You should also see it because the guy’s a great filmmaker. Documentary or polemic, the fact is, he makes movies that get people talking, that might well be manipulative (like – hey! All of Hollywood) but still make you think. For better or worse.

And finally, speaking personally, I think you should see it to open your eyes a bit. No, no, I’m not presuming everything Fahrenheit 9/11 will discuss will be acceptable to you – fact or not – but it’ll get you thinking about politics and politicians. And these days, those are probably people who need to get thought about a little bit more often.

Stephen’s right about one thing (among many): this film will be the hot topic for the summer and the weeks leading up to the U.S. elections in November.

Now there are plenty of other people who would argue that Michael Moore is guilty of the same thing that Stephen hates so much and that’s people who argue without having all of the facts. Granted, Michael has his own agenda to push (namely this year to get Bush out of office) and he will have a distinct slant on the facts that he presents but there’s no such thing as an unbiased documentary. Documentaries are not objective, they can’t be – they’re made by humans. If we had robots who could decide on the topic, the interviews, the shots and the music then we might have something closer to objectivity but since that doesn’t exist we have today’s documentarians.

Perhaps the most vociferous attack on Moore’s new film comes from Christopher Hitches, writer for Vanity Fair. He slams Moore in his article “Unfairenheit 9/11 – The Lies of Michael Moore” in Slate. Speaking about Moore’s stance on doing interviews about this film:

Moore has announced that he won’t even appear on TV shows where he might face hostile questioning. I notice from the New York Times of June 20 that he has pompously established a rapid response team, and a fact-checking staff, and some tough lawyers, to bulwark himself against attack. He’ll sue, Moore says, if anyone insults him or his pet. Some right-wing hack groups, I gather, are planning to bring pressure on their local movie theaters to drop the film. How dumb or thuggish do you have to be in order to counter one form of stupidity and cowardice with another? By all means go and see this terrible film, and take your friends, and if the fools in the audience strike up one cry, in favor of surrender or defeat, feel free to join in the conversation.

However, I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that “fact-checking” is beside the point. And as for the scary lawyers – get a life, or maybe see me in court. But I offer this, to Moore and to his rapid response rabble. Any time, Michael my boy. Let’s redo Telluride. Any show. Any place. Any platform. Let’s see what you’re made of.

I’m not sure why Hitchens is so acidic towards Moore but he definitely does not agree with Moore’s tactics or his views in the film. I think Hitchens takes things a bit too far when he says:

If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq.

I seriously doubt that Moore thinks that. That’s extrapolating the rhetoric beyond logic. That aside though, I did find Hitchen’s discussions on pacificism interesting, particularly when he included George Orwell’s views on pacificists (it’s not flattering).

I read Roger Ebert’s Movie Answer Man column from May 30th yesterday and it was filled with Fahrenheit 9/11 questions. People were complaining that Moore is not giving a chance for the views opposite to his to be aired in his film. Well why should he do that? Sure the weekly Presidential radio address features a rebuttal from the other party but that doesn’t mean that every political speech or film deserves a counterpoint.

Also there seems to be wild accusations that the jury of the Cannes Film Festival was prejudiced towards Moore’s film and that they gave him the Palme d’Or not because it was the most deserving film but because it was the one that fit the political views of the jurists. Ebert responds:

It is assumed that a director distinguished enough to head the Cannes jury is above such conflicts. I attended the jury’s press conference, heard all nine jurors praise the award, and got the unmistakable impression that Tarantino personally would have been equally content if the Korean revenge epic “Old Boy” had won.

I’m no longer a reader of Ebert’s reviews (I used to read them a lot but there came a point where I didn’t think they added anything and/or I felt like Ebert’s appraisal of movies was no longer in tune with mine) but his answer to this question is excellent:

You reported on the reception his film received in Cannes. Given the location, France, and the crowd, journalists, Hollywood movie types and Frenchmen mostly, what did you expect? By praising an obviously politically motivated film, are you simply being a pawn of Moore’s own political agenda?

I must decide if a movie is good or bad, despite whether I agree or disagree with its politics. I oppose the death penalty, but gave “The Life of David Gale” zero stars. “Birth of a Nation” is in my next book, The Great Movies II, even though it reeks of racism. Many film historians rank Leni Riefenstahl’s “The Triumph of the Will” as a cinematic milestone, although it glorifies the Third Reich.

It’s important to look at artistic works for their artistic merit and to do that you sometimes have to put the politics aside. I’ve watched some early Soviet cinema and it’s pretty outstanding film work but it’s blatantly propagandistic. That doesn’t mean that it’s a bad film. It just means that it serves a dual role: beyond the “art for art’s sake” you have the political leanings of the work to deal with.

This ties in with my next link, the review of the movie in The Nation by Stuart Klawans. He entitles it “By Way of Deception” and he thinks this is a very important film and a great movie.

As with any good polemic–and this is an excellent one–you sit in the theater thinking of how someone else would respond, some imaginary “undecided” in a swing state, or perhaps your Uncle Max the Republican. You don’t much monitor your own reactions. But then, as you leave the movie house, you might notice that the sidewalk chatter sounds oddly muffled, the traffic looks a little blurred, as you begin to realize that your attention has not come outside with you; it’s still in the dark, struggling with the feelings that Fahrenheit 9/11 called up and didn’t resolve. Are you outraged, heartbroken, vengeful, morose, gloating, thoughtful, electrified? Moore has elicited all of these emotions and then had the nerve–the filmmaker’s nerve–to leave you to sort them out.

I think there are two bundles of messages in Fahrenheit 9/11, one political and one emotional–and while the first is about as ambiguous as a call to take up pitchforks and torches and storm the castle, the second is too complex to unsettle those in power. It works to unsettle you. It’s what makes Fahrenheit 9/11 a real movie.

I’ve watched movies and read books thinking that way – what would XXXX think if they read this book? Would they change their views if they saw this piece of footage? Of course I do this in the car too thinking about other people in their cars but that’s for another time.

I’ve felt confused after seeing films before. I’ve felt emotionally distraught and not really able to deal with the images that I’ve seen. I know I felt that way when I saw 11′09″01 – September 11. That was a difficult movie to watch because each short film, only 11 minutes long, each dealt with very complex issues and emotions. I remember how I felt on September 11th and I can vividly recall what I did. I think when I do eventually see this film that I will feel “dazed and confused” and it’ll take a little while for me to process what I’ve seen and heard. I know Morgan Spurlock (of Super Size Me fame) felt that way:

It’s Monday night in the NYC and emotions are running high. Just got back home from seeing Fahrenheit 9/11 and I feel so emotionally stripped: angry, sad, depressed … the full gamut of emotions. It’s an incredible movie and Michael will win Academy Award for it. It’s a fine piece of filmmaking.

That’s one thing that I’m jealous about New Yorkers – they get to see so many films either before the rest of the country/continent and/or they get to see films that just don’t play anywhere else. I suppose that’s the benefit of being a “metropolis”.

Getting back to Stephen’s original question of whether I’m going to go see the film, the answer is yes. I just don’t know when yet.