FAHRENHEIT 9/11 (2004) ***1/2 It is very, very rare when the same film makes you laugh this hard, and also causes such severe nausea. Michael Moore is a brilliant story teller, though many hold it against him that the stories he tells happen to be true. Brilliant and telling scenes follow each other without much interruption, my own particular favourite being when Moore (who is also a highly effective peripheral character in his own work) canvasses Capital Hill in an effort to give pro-war politicos the opportunity to enlist their children in the armed forces. And anyone who can ever look at Britney Spears again without laughing at her (different scene) is too far gone to be helped. I understand that it's not a coincidence that this film is released in an election year, and I think that Moore's intention to influence the election to the best of his ability should be applauded. It's certainly more what democracy's supposed to be about than 30 second campaign ads. My problem is that I'm not sure whether Moore's faith in the Democratic Party is naive, or just desperate. When Maxine Waters and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus are searching for a single United States senator to sign their denunciation of the disenfranchisement of thousands of black voters they aren't just being oppressed by Republicans...Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer are among those who refused to sign. It may be argued that there were sensible reasons for the refusal-Al Gore was on the verge of a mental breakdown, entirely lacked guts, stood for nothing, and wouldn't have been a decent president anyway; or the Republicans were threatening to reveal Democratic complicity in something even worse...it's still a bit sad when the Democratic Party, that blacks have supported more faithfully than any other identifiable group, won't even defend their right to vote. In a similar vein Democrats (but not Ted or Barbara) were very supportive of the war in Iraq, even though none of the stuff that Moore brings out was a secret at the time. Why is it that a film-maker has to be the one pointing out the contradictions, discrepancies and...obvious lies...that the Bush administration generates with such regularity? So the problem is that the Republicans are evil assholes and the Democrats are pandering wimps, and Moore is open to charges of propaganda when the two sides of the problem are equally evident and he chooses to only notice one. That all being the case, I have some difficulty with the portion of Moore's premise having to do with the Republicans taking advantage of the 9/ll disaster in order to push through all sorts of undemocratic reforms that effectively strip Americans of their constitutional rights. That process was well underway before 9/ll (as Moore demonstrated with the Florida debacle), and had been for more than two decades. The sadder truth is that 9/ll just made the Republicans even less interested in civil rights and truth, and the Democrats even wimpier.
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