Head Butler - Movies

Fahrenheit 9/11
directed by Michael Moore

In April of 2003, Michael Moore hosted a dinner to mark the one-year anniversary of his book, "Stupid White Men," on the New York Times bestseller list. It should have been a festive evening, but Moore was in a funk. "I've talked to important Democrats who say there's no way to beat Bush in '04," he explained to his tablemates. "They say, 'We'll retake the White House in '08.' But can we make it through four more years of Bush?"

His friend Richard Belzer disagreed. "The wheels are coming off," he said. "Bush will come apart before the '04 election."

Moore was unconvinced. "Oprah? Would she run?" he asked. Over dinner, he tried out other wildcards who might be persuaded to enter the Democratic primaries. None resonated.

And so Michael Moore set out to make a film that would singlehandedly rescue the Republic. He doesn't admit this publicly ---at the high-voltage premiere in New York , he said the film would be successful if it convinced just one person to register and vote --- but that's as deceptive as Moore 's bluster and braggadocio. The fact is, here beats the heart of a patriot and idealist.

"Can a film change the world?" is the real question his new movie asks. It just might.

So what's in this "controversial" film?

“Fahrenheit 9/11” begins --- appropriately enough --- with fireworks: George Bush's victory celebration on Election Night in 2000. Moore then cuts to footage never before seen: one by one, African-American Congressmen and Congresswomen rise to contest the election results. But to be heard, they require the written support of one Senator. None would give that support. In a bitter irony, it falls to Vice-President Gore to declare them all out of order.

Footage of George Bush on vacation in August 2001 produces nothing but dread. We know what's coming. Think Moore is a vulgar opportunist? This is how he handles 9/11: almost a minute of blank screen, with only the sounds of the planes hitting the Towers ---sounds you've never heard before --- and people screaming. Then, over music by Arvo Part, he shows papers blowing in a smoke-filled sky. And the shell-shocked faces of people on the street in Lower Manhattan . And then we're in that Florida classroom, where, for reasons he has never explained, the President sat and read "My Pet Goat" with school kids as the Towers collapsed.

Moore 's pacing is astonishing. Critics fault him for his showmanship, as if good documentaries should be as dry as law texts, but in a film this serious, the comic touches are very welcome. Like when 142 Saudis (including 24 members of the bin Laden family) are allowed to leave the United States on September 13 th --- the music is "We Gotta Get Out of This Place." When we're looking at Bush's "military" record, the music is "Cocaine." We watch John Ashcroft sing. And Britney Spears opining: “We should just trust our President and be faithful."

And then it gets heavy. Battle footage in Iraq . Torture (thankfully brief). Dead babies (also thankfully brief). The charred body parts of ambushed Americans. Iraqi mothers screaming, "They destroyed our houses! God will destroy their houses!" And, to complete the circle, the mother of an American soldier killed in Iraq ("People think they know. I thought I knew. But we don't.").

That mother is this movie's message: The rich and the white and the educated send the poor and the black and the dropouts to fight our wars. They die, so we don't have to. But the deal is: We never send them to fight unless it's absolutely necessary.

There are plenty of books and blogs that spell out, in painstaking detail, how Bush & Co. betrayed our soldiers and put unseemly business alliances with the Saudis above our security. But a movie is an entertainment -- it's easier to absorb. Let's hope millions of people pass up the next summer blockbuster to spend an evening being worked over by "Fahrenheit 9/11."

--- by Jesse Kornbluth, for HeadButler.com