Fahrenheit 9/11
I broke down yesterday and saw Fahrenheit 9/11. It was sitting on my hard drive waiting for me to watch it for free, and Michael Moore had even given me permission, but the invitation came from a friend I don’t see enough, so peer pressure trumped principle.
If, like me, you hated the incoherent mess that was Bowling for Columbine, I have good news for you: Michael Moore has grown up. Columbine’s cynical manipulation and lack of a central thesis are in sharp contrast to this devastating denunciation of George W. Bush and the war in Iraq.
The first scene after the film’s opening titles is a black screen with sounds of the hijacked planes crashing and people screaming, followed by scenes of frightened citizens and people searching for lost family members. These views of humanity are worlds away from the tasteless massacre footage in Columbine. (I must note, however, that no one has memorialized September 11th, 2001 on film better than Spike Lee in the tragically overlooked 25th Hour.)
What follows is an excruciating analysis of how the Bush administration failed to respond adequately to the attacks. The story of the Saudi bigshots who were permitted to fly out of the country before the FAA had resumed allowing private air travel (this point has been hotly debated, but my wording is correct) is one that needed to be told, and Moore nails it. Particularly effective is the interview with Jack Cloonan, a tough-talking ex-FBI agent whom Moore would have to invent if he weren’t real:
Try to imagine what those poor bastards were feeling when they jumped outta that building to their death. Those those those young guys and cops ran into that building, never asked a question, and they’re dead. And their families. lives are ruined. And they’ll never have peace. And if I had to inconvenience a member of the bin Laden family with a subpoena or a grand jury do you think I’d lose any sleep over it? Not for a minute, Mike.
The long-standing relationship between the Bush administration, particularly Bush’s own family, the Saudi royal family, and the bin Ladens has gone underreported, but here Moore occasionally bites off more than he can chew. Even if every fact in the section on the Carlyle Group is accurate, they fly by so fast that the only possible reactions are to embrace the conspiracy theories blindly, or dismiss them out of hand. The interviews with Craig Unger, whose statements on Saudi control of the US economy are prefaced with “Uh, I’ve heard figures….” could well have been replaced by some questions about America’s relationship with Pakistan’s also-unsavory government.
I was reminded at one point in the film of Bill Clinton’s 60 Minutes interview last month. Clinton was talking about Yitzhak Rabin’s reluctance to shake hands with Yasser Arafat at the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. This reluctance was totally understandable, and I don’t know if I could ever shake Arafat’s hand. But Fahrenheit 9/11 shows clip after clip of George H.W. Bush shaking hands with and hugging the bloodthirsty theocrats of Saudi Arabia.
Very few people in the theater with me seemed to get the “Cocaine” joke. That made it even funnier. I won’t spoil the joke here - email me if you really want to know.
The very interesting story of the debate (or lack thereof, depending on where you stand) leading up to the Iraq war isn’t really told in this film. We get a montage of Bush saying “Saddam” and “al Qaeda” multiple times, which proves exactly nothing except that he used those words a lot. Duh. It reminds me of the montage in Columbine where all the news reporters talk about black suspects, which was also supposed to prove something. I would agree that Bush deceived the American people about the relationship between Hussein and al Qaeda, but this silly editing doesn’t tell that story.
All of this leads up to the film’s final third, dealing with the sacrifices made by America’s poor when they enter the military. Here is Moore at his best, telling the stories of regular folks from Flint, free from sarcasm and innuendo. Lila Lipscomb and her grief-stricken family are the heart and soul of the film. (Though, unable to shake my Columbine fixation, I couldn’t help but suspect that if this were the first half of Moore’s last film, we’d be chuckling at Ms. Lipscomb for being a gun-toting redneck taught by the media to fear minorities. Or something.)
The film is not free from fits of exaggeration, as some of the infamous Fifty-six Deceipts show. Some of those deceipts are legitimate, and some are hair-splitting. Moore’s suggestion near the conclusion that the purpose of the war was somehow to keep the class system intact is fairly silly.
Moore deserves kudos for avoiding any and all anti-American sneers. His core fans would have applauded a well-timed, “Well, that’s what America is all about, right?” But the only judgement passed on the nation is in one of Moore’s conversations with Lipscomb - “It’s a great country, isn’t it?” “It is.” By honoring regular Americans and their values, Moore might succeed in doing something he’s never done before - change minds.