Fahrenheit 9/11 «««
R, 122m. 2004
Written and directed by Michael Moore.
Writer, producer, director Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 is a two-hour one sided, intriguingly manipulative and sometimes daringly humorous slam-u-mentary bash fest made by a controversial filmmaker who has proven he isn’t the least bit afraid to make a jackass of himself on network television. It’s not enough for Moore to drive his point home on how much he hates President Bush bashing him after winning the academy award for his 2002 documentary, Bowling For Columbine at the 2003 Oscars. He has to make a movie he thinks will influence a presidential election this November to prove it. For me, to call Fahrenheit 9/11 a well-researched documentary filled with both positive and negative perspectives would be a complete boldface lie.
This is a movie for people from all walks of life whether you agree with Moore’s unflattering portrait of President Bush and has handling of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that preceded it or not.
For minorities still infuriated over the results of the 2000 presidential election, it’s fuel for the fire like the ones we see in the film’s first five minutes as various African Americans contest the election results before Congress calling Vice President and presidential candidate Al Gore, "Mr. President." This is the kind of movie the families who lost loved ones on September 11 can look toward taking all their anger out on since they apparently feel they didn’t get any apologies from the folks on Capitol Hill. The recent 9/11 investigations laid blame on the doorsteps of the intelligence community and the Bush administration for reportedly not doing enough to prevent 9/11 from happening.
Conspiracy theorists will take glee at the film’s assertions of President Bush’s business ties to the Saudi government, the fallen energy giant Enron, and in particular Osama bin Laden’s family. Whereas one can only wonder what the president might have been thinking that day in a Florida classroom after being told by his advisers that two planes hit the World Trade Center, Moore claims to already have the answer.
“Who screwed me,” are the words Moore says Bush must be thinking as the president with a blank stare reading along with the class the children’s book, My Pet Goat, in between images of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda’s CEO. This is like watching a big budget long awaited conspiracy minded Oliver Stone film where images of the culprits behind Watergate in Nixon (1995) and President Kennedy’s assassination in JFK (1991) are thrown in for good measure while the characters mull over who screwed both them and the country.
The difference with Fahrenheit 9/11 is instead of watching Hollywood’s highest paid stars playing the parts of real life characters, Moore incorporates actual news reel footage of Bush and his administration feeding us his own bizarre take on the president’s term in office. This is a world where the Go-Go’s tune Vacation is heard in the background as “Dubya” is seen lounging on the golf course. It’s a place where in the days after 9/11 the number one rated show is a western like Bonanza (1959-1973) called "Afghanistan" where Dubya is portrayed as the old west’s Ben Cartwright in reference to the president’s plans to send troops to the Taliban ruled country.
This is Moore’s twisted version of “Smile, You’re on Candid Camera” where Attorney General John Ashcroft is seen singing "Let the Eagle Soar" and where the president while playing golf, shortly after calling upon all nations "to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers", says to the press, "Now watch this drive."
I found all this amusing, if not devilishly clever. Trouble is when Moore isn’t seen driving around the nation’s capitol in an ice cream truck explaining to members of Congress what exactly the Patriot Act is (apparently no one in Congress ever read it before signing it) or trying to get congressional leaders to enlist their sons and daughters to go to war, he is busy taking us on his own personal journey through what he thinks is Anytown, USA. It’s the disturbingly negatively bleak outlook of American life as residents of abandoned, rundown neighborhoods talk of how their suburb is as bad as the bomb-ridden cities in Iraq.
He literally bombards his audience with conversations between disenfranchised wounded military servicemen with severed limbs who talk about how they’ll never vote Republican again and now question our reasons for going to war in Iraq. At one point, he focuses in on a couple of marine recruiters commenting how instead of visiting a local town’s wealthier areas looking to recruit men and women for the military, they go to the poorer parts targeting minorities asking them if they’d like to join the armed forces.
If the movie weren’t so one-sided, I might have possibly shed a tear for Lila Lipscomb, the mother from Flint, Michigan who is shown reading the letter from her son who was killed in Iraq in which he writes calling Bush a "dumb president." The minute I heard her say how no person should live to bury their son or daughter, I felt like saying, "Well, neither should the ones who bury their sons and daughters who are murdered every day by drunk drivers and are shot in robberies or for that matter, and die in terrorist attacks like 9/11." Perhaps I might have even been influenced to vote for "the other guy" running for president this November. Instead the film just makes me happy I voted the way I did.
Fahrenheit 9/11 a cheap slap in the face to the military servicemen right now who do believe in the job they are doing overseas. Just when the film offers a differing perspective as when the grieving Lipscomb is confronted near the White House by another woman who is for the war in Iraq, the movie immediately cuts to another scene.
A part of me wished Fahrenheit 9/11 were relegated to airing on PBS where I could be given the chance to switch stations in between all the endlessly depressing negativity. Therein, however, lies the problem.
The film is entertaining in the way talk show hosts Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel mock President Bush most every night. On that level, I do give it a cautionary recommendation simply because as much as I yearned to relieve my bladder of the large coke I had drunk earlier sitting through Moore’s endless tirade of Bush bashing, I couldn’t bring myself to head for the doors out of fear of missing something.
Love it or hate it, Fahrenheit 9/11 is the kind of movie you can’t take your eyes off of for even a minute. Just don’t call it a fact-based documentary.
©6/28/04
R, 122m. 2004
Written and directed by Michael Moore.
This is a movie for people from all walks of life whether you agree with Moore’s unflattering portrait of President Bush and has handling of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that preceded it or not.
For minorities still infuriated over the results of the 2000 presidential election, it’s fuel for the fire like the ones we see in the film’s first five minutes as various African Americans contest the election results before Congress calling Vice President and presidential candidate Al Gore, "Mr. President." This is the kind of movie the families who lost loved ones on September 11 can look toward taking all their anger out on since they apparently feel they didn’t get any apologies from the folks on Capitol Hill. The recent 9/11 investigations laid blame on the doorsteps of the intelligence community and the Bush administration for reportedly not doing enough to prevent 9/11 from happening.
Conspiracy theorists will take glee at the film’s assertions of President Bush’s business ties to the Saudi government, the fallen energy giant Enron, and in particular Osama bin Laden’s family. Whereas one can only wonder what the president might have been thinking that day in a Florida classroom after being told by his advisers that two planes hit the World Trade Center, Moore claims to already have the answer.
“Who screwed me,” are the words Moore says Bush must be thinking as the president with a blank stare reading along with the class the children’s book, My Pet Goat, in between images of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda’s CEO. This is like watching a big budget long awaited conspiracy minded Oliver Stone film where images of the culprits behind Watergate in Nixon (1995) and President Kennedy’s assassination in JFK (1991) are thrown in for good measure while the characters mull over who screwed both them and the country.
The difference with Fahrenheit 9/11 is instead of watching Hollywood’s highest paid stars playing the parts of real life characters, Moore incorporates actual news reel footage of Bush and his administration feeding us his own bizarre take on the president’s term in office. This is a world where the Go-Go’s tune Vacation is heard in the background as “Dubya” is seen lounging on the golf course. It’s a place where in the days after 9/11 the number one rated show is a western like Bonanza (1959-1973) called "Afghanistan" where Dubya is portrayed as the old west’s Ben Cartwright in reference to the president’s plans to send troops to the Taliban ruled country.
This is Moore’s twisted version of “Smile, You’re on Candid Camera” where Attorney General John Ashcroft is seen singing "Let the Eagle Soar" and where the president while playing golf, shortly after calling upon all nations "to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers", says to the press, "Now watch this drive."
I found all this amusing, if not devilishly clever. Trouble is when Moore isn’t seen driving around the nation’s capitol in an ice cream truck explaining to members of Congress what exactly the Patriot Act is (apparently no one in Congress ever read it before signing it) or trying to get congressional leaders to enlist their sons and daughters to go to war, he is busy taking us on his own personal journey through what he thinks is Anytown, USA. It’s the disturbingly negatively bleak outlook of American life as residents of abandoned, rundown neighborhoods talk of how their suburb is as bad as the bomb-ridden cities in Iraq.
He literally bombards his audience with conversations between disenfranchised wounded military servicemen with severed limbs who talk about how they’ll never vote Republican again and now question our reasons for going to war in Iraq. At one point, he focuses in on a couple of marine recruiters commenting how instead of visiting a local town’s wealthier areas looking to recruit men and women for the military, they go to the poorer parts targeting minorities asking them if they’d like to join the armed forces.
If the movie weren’t so one-sided, I might have possibly shed a tear for Lila Lipscomb, the mother from Flint, Michigan who is shown reading the letter from her son who was killed in Iraq in which he writes calling Bush a "dumb president." The minute I heard her say how no person should live to bury their son or daughter, I felt like saying, "Well, neither should the ones who bury their sons and daughters who are murdered every day by drunk drivers and are shot in robberies or for that matter, and die in terrorist attacks like 9/11." Perhaps I might have even been influenced to vote for "the other guy" running for president this November. Instead the film just makes me happy I voted the way I did.
Fahrenheit 9/11 a cheap slap in the face to the military servicemen right now who do believe in the job they are doing overseas. Just when the film offers a differing perspective as when the grieving Lipscomb is confronted near the White House by another woman who is for the war in Iraq, the movie immediately cuts to another scene.
A part of me wished Fahrenheit 9/11 were relegated to airing on PBS where I could be given the chance to switch stations in between all the endlessly depressing negativity. Therein, however, lies the problem.
The film is entertaining in the way talk show hosts Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel mock President Bush most every night. On that level, I do give it a cautionary recommendation simply because as much as I yearned to relieve my bladder of the large coke I had drunk earlier sitting through Moore’s endless tirade of Bush bashing, I couldn’t bring myself to head for the doors out of fear of missing something.
Love it or hate it, Fahrenheit 9/11 is the kind of movie you can’t take your eyes off of for even a minute. Just don’t call it a fact-based documentary.
©6/28/04
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