Fahrenheit 9/11
Originally written for The Milpitas Post.
Directed by Michael Moore
Rated: R for some violent and disturbing images, and for language.
Some movies are easy to review: big, dumb action flicks; sequels; really good dramas. But other movies are the kind movie reviewers dread. The ones that are hard to pin down, hard to explain, hard to review in a way that might actually be useful to the readers. “Fahrenheit 9/11” is the latter kind of movie.
Michael Moore is well-known as a director and author of politically-minded, left-wing tracts. His films “Roger and Me” and “Bowling for Columbine” were sources of discussion and heated argument, as were his books “Stupid White Men” and “Dude, Where’s my Country?” “Fahrenheit 9/11” is no exception to the rule.
This film, which can only loosely be called a documentary, is incendiary, biased, one-sided, and sure to act like a match to a gasoline tank when brought up in any kind of politically mixed company. Indeed, it’s not hard to see why some have started to call Moore the liberal equivalent of Rush Limbaugh. He makes no bones about his bias, and it’s easy to see time and again as the film rolls.
“Fahrenheit 9/11” examines the Bush presidency, from the legitimacy of his electoral win to the relationship between the Bush family and Saudi royalty to Bush’s handling of September 11th and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some of the material is old news – the fact, for example, that the news station which first called the election in Bush’s favor when everyone else was calling it for Gore is run by one of Bush’s relatives. But some of the information is new, such as when Moore returns to his hometown of Flint, Michigan, to look at the effects of the war in Iraq on one working-class family.
The connections Moore draws between the Saudi family and the Bush family are intriguing and may warrant a more unbiased examination. Moore claims that the Saudi royal family and other powerful families from that country are so heavily invested in both President Bush’s personal businesses and American businesses that they effective have a greater say in the President’s actions than the American voters. This seems a bit unlikely, but he backs it up with some interesting facts and figures.
What undermines the film the most, however, is Moore’s bias. As entertaining as it may be for Bush-haters to cheer Moore’s mockery of the President, the over-the-top harshness of much of the film will drive away the more moderate thinkers it might otherwise persuade to Moore’s side. In that respect, it fails as a propaganda piece. Likewise, there are plenty of articles coming out, like “Unfairenheit 9/11 by Christopher Hitchens on Slate.com, pointing out the facts Moore ignores in the film – facts which seriously damage his own arguments. Moore would have done better to include them and try to counter them than leave them out entirely.
In the end, my take on “Fahrenheit 9/11” boils down to this: if you want to spend a couple hours ragging on the Bush administration, go for it. If you are a fan of the President or dislike biased political commentary, stay away. It’s not a straightforward documentary, and will almost certainly be the source of plenty of screaming arguments. That said, it’s worth seeing if you can distance yourself from the bias because of its historical importance: as far as I know, this is the first time a film this critical of a sitting president has been released while that president was in office.