I'm Going To See Fahrenheit 9/11 Tonight, Whats it Like?
Submitted by Rushmore on Fri, 09/10/2004 - 01:41
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hi, im about 10 Minutes away from leaving to see Fahrenheit 9/11, i thought it would be interesting if you wanted to post here what you thought of it, so when i next check listology, i would have seen it, and i can see if i agree or disagree with your comments, and express our views on the movie while its fresh in my mind.
Well feel free to comment on "Fahrenheit 9/11"
pleaz dont feel like you have to post anything, just thuoght it might be fun :")
bb (and wish me happy viewing! :")
SEEN, VIEWS POSTED BELOW
Ugghhh, its so filled with half truths to start. Its actually fairly funny, but when Moore tries to paint the wars in Afghan. & Iraq as grabs for oil he loses me.
Overrated. It's kinda funny, not a bad film, but too anti-Bush and full of .. well, exaggerations, that half way through I lost a lot of respect for it. Not bad, not great.
ive seen it now and i have to say i thought it was a very well made Film. it had Tragic and sad moments. it also featured Morre's blend of comedy and un-convered and expressed some good points,
I See your point Wezzo about it being too Anti-Bush, but i think that is over-shadowed by the sad stories of tragic loss. Thx for your comments Wezzo and Grizham
I would posit that it would be impossible for Fahrenheit 9/11 to be "too anti-Bush". This is not because of any political beliefs that I may or may not hold but because the driving purpose behind F-9/11 was to make a case against President Bush. Therefore the very definition of success, on the film's terms, is to be the most anti-Bush possible.
I thought that Michael Moore brilliantly danced along the line between civil prosecution and polemical screed. He had to make a film that passed muster factually, that hung together as a movie with its plotting, that made a specific argument which flew in the face of the conventional wisdom of the media and that could affect all but the politically close-minded. In terms of difficulty Moore begins his routine with a start value of 10.0 and has very few deductions along the way... I think he scores awfully high with this movie as a piece of art/entertainment.
To look at it as a legal exercise: When you've got the facts you argue the facts. When you don't have the facts you argue the law. I find it stunning, both as an indictment of his critics and as a tribute to the job he did, that Moore is being attacked about his character, temperament, judgement, motives, political affiliation, tone, everything!... with the exception of his facts. I have noticed a lot of this in public and political life recently. People's positions are not debated on the terms of their worth but rather in terms of the character of those holding the position. If a candidate has a bad plan for Homeland Security the opposition comes in the form of belittlement and character assassination. Neither side(s) will argue based upon anything even loosely construed as the facts. I think that you can be fairly certain that, if there were any innacurracies in F-9/11 that the conservative media would have swarmed all over it. The only swarming that I saw was all directed at Michael Moore personally.
As for the movie I thought that it was highly effective in laying out an emotional arc for the audience to follow. As far as possible the porridge was "just right." It was wonky but not too abstruse, inflammatory but not incendiary, grim but not humourless and angry but still grounded in emotion. My heart almost broke for the mother from Flint. When leaving the theater I overheard someone who was upset that Michael Moore "did that to that woman." Meaning that Moore put her through the emotional stress of being on camera and in his film. I think there may be a lot to that sentiment but that there was a higher purpose (that does not mean the same thing as "moral purpose") to be served by her inclusion. She obviously agreed to participate and the fact that the display of her pain might offend us is no excuse to reject what she or Michael Moore has to say. In fact, I consider it an attack on the families of the soldiers (dead and living) when people try to silence her voice. Who better than someone who has lost their child to comment on how the War on Iraq is going, how it is affecting people.
The most shocking and disappointing thing about F-9/11 wasn't in the movie itself. It was the fact that there was anything to make a movie about. If the media had not failed in a catastrophic way Michael Moore would have had no material from which to make his movie. If the footage of soldiers being IEDed alongside the road had already been shown in the States there would be no purpose to putting it in the film. Likewise, if President Bush's seven (?7?) minute pause after being told of the second plane hitting the towers had been disseminated in the press and if the Bush Administration hadn't tried to rewrite/erase those minutes from history then there would have been no shock value in showing the President reading My Pet Goat for several minutes to the school kids. From the reactions it received you would have thought that no one had ever seen the War on Iraq before. And you might have been right.
It is conventional parlance to say "If the media had done their job..." but I don't believe that is accurate. It is not The Media's job to do anything. The Media is composed of multi-national corporations. It is satellite companies owning newspapers, running television stations, operating movie studios owned by defense contractors.... Those things are not designed to present all sides of an issue in an unbiased way. They are not even designed to present two sides of an issue. Sometimes not even the issue at all. In the end it is not their failing [wait for it] it is hours. We shouldn't be expected to go out and research or fact-check every (or any) issue. But we shouldn't be surprised that we don't know "the whole story" when we are unwilling to exert any effort to make sure we get good information. The fact that we can learn some things by (and only by) going to a movie should disturb us. The movie itself shouldn't be what disturbs us.
This is a great review, even though I must admit that I didn't like the movie as much as you did. I mean, when you really think about it, Moore didn't always rely on his facts. Since you mentioned it, let's take that mother from Flint. Yes, her tragedy is heartbreaking, and my deepest sympathies go to her. But does that really prove that Bush is a bad president? I mean, even in the most justified wars, there have been deaths, and some of the people who died probably had mothers who were grieving. The scene provokes an heavy emotional response, but does it really prove Moore's point?
I couldn't agree more, though, about the character attacks on Moore. All the conservatives in the country are shouting that Moore hates America. I don't think he hates America, I think he hates Bush. I think if he hated America, he would actually want America to become a monarchy with Bush as the unquestioned ruler, because that would be very, very bad for America.
P.S. Ironic, the date that I'm posting this.
I think that your sixth sentence (not starring Bruce Willis) contradicts your second sentence. You are right, it is a fact that mothers have always lost sons. Wives have lost husbands. And now children are losing mothers. But the War on Iraq is, in the Orwellian sense, being waged without cost. Michael Moore has to demonstrate the true cost of war in order to convince people of the importance of the case he is laying out. Otherwise it would be easy to dismiss him and his movie as mere sound and fury.
Moore lays out the stakes for the soldiers and the true danger that they face. He uses the mother to illustrate the cost when those stakes are lost. The other pincer in Moore's argument is the disconnect and disdain that those in power (including President Bush) have towards the Armed Forces (and he barely touches upon Iraqi civilians.) Moore rides around the Capitol in an ice cream truck reading the Patriot Act. He tries to corral politicians about having their children serve. These egregious failings would be of little import if people were not dying on Iraqi soil. Moore tries to make the audience face the consequences of their (in)actions and the actions of their representatives.
This war has been made anti-septic. It seems one step removed from Harlan Ellison's Star Trek script for "City on the Edge of Forever" where casualties are determined by computer and then assemble to be executed cleanly and painlessly. [I am now going to animate Moore's purpose in a way he may not have intended and certainly did not have time to articulate.] The parallel between the War on Iraq and "The City on the Edge of Forever" would be stronger if, in the Star Trek episode, the middle and upper classes were exempt from the possibility of dying. Only the lower classes would bear the burden of the war in terms of casualties and, as long as they dutifully report to the elimination centers, there is no cost to the upper classes in this scenario. But the costs remain. Soldiers who have joined the Armed Forces (or the national Guard) as a means of economic advancement because they have no other viable options are coming back blind, without limbs, psychologically damaged and in body bags. The fiscal costs to the upper classes are offset by a rollback of the social safety net. Programs for the poor and powerless are suffering draconian cuts. Soldiers, based in the U.S. no less, have to be on food stamps to feed their families. The choices to get into the Middle Class seem to be limited to working at Wal-Mart (which is not a realistic road into the Middle Class) or roll the dice and join the Armed Forces. This reality is suppressed or ignored by the cultural elites in America. Pictures of caskets coming back from Iraq are banned. President Bush laments the loss of life in a blanket statement but hasn't acknowledged an individual death by attending a funeral.
NOTE: I am trying not to discuss the merits of Fahrenheit 9/11 in a partisan or political way. I'd rather leave discussion of the political, moral, factual or whatever basis to another forum. I know that one's politics and skepticism/faith in Moore's evidence has a great influence on an individual's reaction to the film. I personally want to confine myself to an artistic deconstruction of Moore's work. END NOTE
I also think that Moore employs the mother in F-9/11 as a way for the audience to resolve themselves in opposing the war and, by extension, President Bush. Following the mother's emotional arc from trusting pro-War woman to bereft mother is a powerful argument that Moore marshalls. It is in the face of this, both evidence and example, that President Bush's conduct is judged... and Moore finds him wanting. If Iraq really is America's Viet Nam, leaving aside the irrelevance it has to bin-Laden, it should be remembered that Vietnam went on for over a decade without major opposition or even discussion by the American public. It was only when pictures from Vietnam were broadcast nightly on The News, in combination with the draft lottery, that popular protest started. It took another decade for that war to end. There are over 58,000 names on the Wall of the VVM, at one point in that War the casualties numbered a thousand. Even in today's 500 channel universe I don't think that the media will cover Iraq well or completely. I think that this why Moore felt he had to make this movie and why there was subject matter for him to work with. It is also why I think that Fahrenheit 9/11 is an artistic success. I just wish I didn't have to get my information from a movie made by an overweight guy from Michigan.
Interesting. I guess where we might differ in opinion is that I never assumed that the War on Iraq was "being waged without cost." I always knew that innocent lower-class Americans were dying. And while I agree that Michael Moore did a good job of humanizing this "cost" of the war, into a real person's tragedy instead of a statistic, that still doesn't provoke an intellectual response with me. I may feel for the Flint mother, but either way, I still know people are dying.
In truth, I think Moore was kind of lazy. Trying to prove that the war on Iraq was unnecessary is difficult, and while a little time was spent on that, I don't think there was enough. On the other hand, trying to prove that people are dying in Iraq is easy.
I think most people would accept a war of greater costs if they strongly believed in our position. If, shortly after September 11th, 2001, Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda had materialized a regular old army, and Bush had declared war on this army of terrorists, there would NEVER be a movie made bashing Bush's decision no matter how many people died.
You are certainly right about Moore's portrayal the heartlessness that politicians have towards those sacrificing their lives for America. That was an aspect of the movie that created both an emotional and an intellectual response.
As for your last paragraph, I think the War on Iraq was met with protest right at the start, at least from the liberals in the country, even though, like you, I found the media coverage lacking.
I mean, for what Moore is trying to do, he succeeds. He does a good job of giving the whole situation a human feel, rather than just the cold, impersonal treatment that the politicians and media have given us. But while his previous film Bowling for Columbine taught me new information and argued a point effectively, I don't feel that Fahrenheit 9/11 had the same level of informativeness.
I'm surprised this hasn't gotten more responses. Then again, it's a weekend. I'd comment, but I havne't seen the movie yet myself.
Do you plan to see it? because i do recommend
Yup, it's on the list, thanks.