Fahrenheit 9/11

The controversy surrounding the release of Fahrenheit 9/11 has tended to obscure the fact that it is a very good film. Michael Moore has gathered together a number of well-known incidents concerning the Bush administration and the war on terrorism, and laid them end to end, along with a few more of his own. In so doing, he has done the country a great service. A few of the roads he takes us down are rather speculative, but for the most part the material is sound, and the indictment is devastating. Moore steers clear of the issue of Saddam’s regime, and the question of the international legitimacy of a theory of pre-emptive war. It would be possible for a viewer to walk away from the film saying “It’s all true...but I still support the president’s decision to invade Iraq.” What viewer’s will find it difficult to question is the devious means by which the administration has used the war on terror to advance it’s personal interest in toppling Saddam’s government, while neglecting to pursue the perpetrators of genuine terrorist acts with any degree of conviction.

The second thing to be mentioned, I suppose, is how understated the film is. The impact may be incendiary, but it seems to me that the language is restrained, the points are brought home with a minimum of footage, and there are moments of appalling humor and subtlety sprinkled here and there. You could spend an hour on the Florida election fraud—Moore has only ten minutes, and he deals with them very imaginatively and effectively as the film opens. You could spend an hour on the UN and the WMD issue, an hour on the half-hearted effort in Afghanistan to locate Bin Laden, an hour on the background of the administration’s long obsession with Iraq. It would all be time well-spent, but in a single feature film we simply don’t have the time. Rather, Moore takes us swiftly from scene to scene, from event to event, weaving his way through graphic footage to moments of personal emotion and on to talking-heads analysis with unerring sureness and balance. He has brought the war in Iraq home to us with remarkable effectiveness, and at the same time, he has shed some light on the relations between our current foreign policy, the mindless promotion of fear on the national level, and the very structure of the increasingly fragmented society which underlies and propels it all. The Republicans come in for extended abuse, as is only natural considering they’re running the show, but the Democrats don’t exactly shine either. Moore himself appears only briefly here and there, which is also a plus.

Anyone can be made to look stupid by judicious editing, of course, but as the film proceeds it becomes clear that George W. Bush was an easy mark. If that were all the film contained, however, it would hardly rise above the level of a Saturday Night Live skit. Moore’s portrait of the interconnected world of elite Republican party supporters, Texas oilmen, Saudi sheiks, Taliban leaders, and defense contractors is fascinating, and although there are a few assumptions and insinuations that scholars might take issue with, the broad sweep of the scene reaches about the level that most of us are able to comprehend.

The other end of the spectrum—the nitty-gritty of the war in Iraq—is equally well-depicted, I think. It swings from the rock-n-roll gung-ho of teenaged soldiers that are pumped up for a fight, to the confusions and doubts of those who find themselves killing civilians, to the anguish of those who have been maimed in combat, or who have lost a loved one, and are wondering what it was all for in the first place.

I don’t think there is much in the film that’s not well-known to those who follow events closely, but it’s worthwhile having the entire mess nicely arranged on a platter for the rest of us. It will be more difficult, I think, for anyone who sees the film to remain confident that the Bush administration is capable of making America a safer place to be, or that what we see in the news offers a fair and accurate picture of what’s actually going on. It’s also interesting to note, I think, that criticisms of the film have largely been directed ad hominum against that awful man with the camera, Michael Moore, rather than against the wider truth of the material he’s assembled for us on screen.

On the rainy Sunday afternoon that I went to see it, Fahrenheit 9/11 was showing on three screens, and the lines were extending out of sight around the block. The mood was of curiosity and excitement, rather than of belligerence or self-congratulatory disdain for the powers that be, and I was proud to be a part of it.