Movie Review:

Fahrenheit 9/11

    Bowling for Columbine gained Michael Moore a reputation of being something of an ambush filmmaker, and he was charged with staging events to better make his case.  This was a bit of a silly charge, as most documentaries have agendas and many involve some variety of staged event, but considering Moore's particular agenda, this was somehow deemed especially unacceptable.

    Moore appears to have taken the criticism to heart, and with a couple of minor exceptions, Fahrenheit 9/11 contains very little that anyone could realistically complain about save the opinion Moore holds about President Bush and those connected to him in various ways.

    Let's dispense with the "problems" right from the get-go.  Yes, there are some places in which Moore deliberately juxtaposes images in what could be considered a misleading way, such as one place where he follows up shots of Iraqi children playing with those of missiles hitting.  (Of course, there's also actual footage of dead Iraqi children, so it's not as if the juxtaposition is completely unfair.)  There are a few other examples, but pretty much everything that could be construed as misleading is obvious enough that Moore doesn't deserve to be blamed for tricking the audience.

    The only example of ambush filmmaking in Fahrenheit is a brief scene near the end where Moore attempts to convince members of Congress to have their children enlist in the military, and it's neither as long nor as potentially unfair as Moore's meeting with Charlton Heston in Columbine.  Has Moore refined his tactics - or did he simply not have to resort to them this time?

    Evidence points particularly to the latter.  Why waste time with ambush interviews when there's so much footage of various Republicans looking stupid available in the good old public domain?

    Moore starts by touching quickly on the 2000 election, and then moves into the reason for the film: September 11, 2001.  Much of the material in this section comes right out of Moore's book, Dude, Where's My Country?, but it carries additional resonance on the big screen, where we can actually see our political figures doing and saying things that, with hindsight and some additional information from Moore (fleshed out even more in the book), look... well, is there any word better than unbelievable?

    Moore's savvy editing and clever musical choices help get the audience to snicker at various sound bites, but so many of them are so incredible on their own that this movie practically made itself.  In fact, that's Moore's greatest accomplishment here: as skillfully as he creates the film, he is mostly presenting meticulously researched facts about the Bush administration's various connections to the Middle East, in particular Saudi Arabia and Iraq.  The facts are pretty disturbing, and the idea of how many people either don't know them or ignore them is even worse.

    And that's what makes Moore so important.  Someone has to do this legwork - maybe he's not as unbiased as some people would hope, but it doesn't make the bulk of his work any less valuable as reportage, and his combination of message and skill is an important tool in the world of dissent - that good old-fashioned American tradition.  It's hard to imagine too many people changing their minds based on this film - certainly, liberals will hear what they want to and conservatives will dismiss it out of hand.  But despite an obvious bias, Moore is surprisingly straight in his criticism - it really never gets ridiculous or hits the level of bluster that so many thought he achieved in his speech at the Oscars in March 2003.   Moore keeps himself under control and turns in an outstanding film as a result.

    When the film ended, an interesting thing happened: the audience applauded.  I've seen that happen a few times before, but that wasn't the whole story.  Almost the entire theater, which was probably two-thirds full for an afternoon showing, sat through the entire end credits - and when those had concluded, they applauded again.  It was a fitting salute to a terrific achievement of a film.  A+

Fahrenheit 9/11 is a Lions Gate, IFC Films, and Fellowship Adventure Group release.  Rated for some violent and disturbing images, and for language.