Fahrenheit 9/11 Review
By Joe Lozito
Bush Whacked
Michael Moore has been making documentaries for 15 years and, by now, if he wants you to feel a certain way, you will. In "Fahrenheit 9/11", Mr. Moore's scathing indictment of the Bush presidency's mishandling of the events following the attacks of September 11th, 2001, Mr. Moore makes no secret that he sees the Bush administration to be a bunch of scheming, money-hungry diplomats with no concern for the common man.
Mr. Moore, using a vast array of archival footage, paints a picture of a lame duck president sent out to vacation during the majority of his first months in office. He then shows the time lapsed footage of the seven minutes after President Bush heard about the attacks at the World Trade Center, during which he continues his visit with a Florida kindergarten class. Mr. Moore's continual voice-over imagines what the President might have been thinking during those seven minutes.
The film's brilliant opening credit sequence shows various members of the government preparing for on-camera interviews, drawing a fine point on the circus that the American political system has become. "Fahrenheit" then goes on to uncover the ties between George W, George HW, the Saudi's and Bin Laden. And in the end, it all ties back to money.
Like his equally compelling "Bowling for Columbine", "Fahrenheit" sometimes gets side-tracked, goes off on tangents, and lacks a cohesive point. Mr. Moore specializes in splicing anecdotal video footage (sometimes out of context) as mounting evidence for his case. As his best, Mr. Moore lets the evidence speak for itself, but often he is just taking potshots. What makes "Fahrenheit" so watchable is that Mr. Moore has so much to work with. The Bush administration has done such a poor job of leading this country through one of its most critical moments, that the amount of footage Mr. Moore had to weed through must have been dizzying.
Mr. Moore wisely keeps himself out from in front of the camera, except for two wonderfully inspired setpieces, the first involving reading The Patriot Act to Congress via microphone from an ice cream truck and the second being a segment in which Mr. Moore corners congressmen and attempts to get them to enlist their children in the Army. The contortions that these men will go through to get out of speaking with Mr. Moore are worth the price of admission. This is the power of free speech in action. Seeing these men squirm in the face of an obvious hypocrisy is the crowning moment of Mr. Moore's film, and one that feels more true than, for example, his berating of Charlton Heston in "Bowling".
Then Mr. Moore uncovers what must have felt like a documentarian's gold. He interviews a staunch republican and patriot in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. Lila Lipscomb has a proud history of family service in the armed forces. During the course of the film, one of Lila's children goes to Iraq. He doesn't come back. The change Lila undergoes is more true and heartrending then anything Mr. Moore could have scripted or contrived from videotape. But, while we feel for this woman, we can't help noticing how the camera carefully frames her against the Washington DC backdrop as she breaks down crying in front of the White House. Yes, Mr. Moore has shown us the pain of war, but in the end he is making a film. Wouldn't the humane thing have been to shut off the cameras at that moment? That is not a possibility today. Mr. Moore needed to have that moment in his film and the audience needed to see it. But why? Maybe that's a question for his next film.
