caseyporn

Fahrenheit 9/11

I just watched Michael Moore's latest effort, Fahrenheit 9/11. If you haven't heard something about this film, please remove the large cube of lead from your head. Before and after its opening (in the States, local release is in a few weeks, first at the Melbourne Film Festival and then nationally), it has attracted a lot of attention from a lot of different groups. The reaction has been "mixed", to say the least, but that can be expected from a movie as incendiary as this one.

The very title is inflammatory, and its tagline, "the temperature at which truth burns", leaves little room for interpretation. Moore's mission in the film is to show the deceitfulness and underhandedness of the current Bush administration, both after the September 11th attacks, and following events including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The film is unapologetically one-sided, but tells a story that the mainstream media of the US has buried.

If you read a few leftist blogs, or kept up with international media concerning Bush, 9/11, WMD, and Iraq, Fahrenheit 9/11 holds very few surprises. Yep, Bush is telling a lot less than the truth, and his motives are very unclear, if not positively shady. There is little in the way of new information.

A lot of work has been put into finding a lot of good footage to back up the story. Included in this is video footage of captured Iraqis with bags over their heads, having their photo taken with smiling US soldiers. Surprisingly, very little was said about this in the film, or perhaps it was a meaningful pause. These type of acts are not necessarily what Moore wants to show, though: his issue is with the President, not with the American people or its army, so perhaps he chose not to dwell on something that has been brought shockingly to all our attentions recently.

Much of the footage is of Bush looking like a fool; sometimes, it feels like too much of a cheap shot. Sure, you're lampooning this guy, but we want facts, damn it, not more pictures of him looking like a dumber-than-average primate.

If Bush has survived these same (basic) facts being exposed previously, perhaps this movie makes no difference to him. Republicans should definitely worry that this already the most successful documentary ever. The facts, as always, are more complicated (and often more damning) than can be presented easily in a two-hour documentary that has broad appeal. It would be sad if this movie was the biggest lasting image of this period of history, since it is only one piece of the puzzle. But better this image than most of the newsmedia produced at the time.

Posted by Casey at June 29, 2004 06:29 PM