My wife and I just attended the opening of Michael Moore's evocative and yes, provocative, film "Fahrenheit 9/11." At the end, it received a standing ovation from a nearly packed theater in staunchly-Republican Omaha, Nebraska. Only once did the audience, which ran the spectrum from "seniors" like myself to "Gothic" teens with pierced noses and spiky hair, express their feelings in spontaneous applause at the remarks of a gray-haired retiree near the end of the film who called for the defeat of George Bush. While Moore edited in lighter moments to relieve the somber tension of his narrative, for much of "Fahrenheit" the audience seemed transfixed, chuckling occasionally, while quietly trying to choke back the flood tide of tears wanting to burst forth.
Compared to "Bowling for Columbine", which I also saw, "Fahrenheit 9/11" is Moore's finest cinematic effort. The story is much more tightly woven and there is far less of the overweight, disheveled filmmaker visible. Instead, the focus of Moore's satirically critical lens and skillful editing is on the common people impacted by the inane policies of the current American administration.
Perhaps the most heart-wrenching scenes are of the Flint, Michigan mother who encouraged her children to join the Army to get the college education she and her husband couldn't afford to give them. Moore interviews her before she learns her son had been one of the soldiers killed in the crash of a Blackhawk helicopter near Karbala. At the time she worked for a non-profit agency trying to help people find work in a community devastated by auto plant closings, where she estimated the real unemployment rate is a shocking 50 percent.
"Once you lose your unemployment benefits, they don't count you anymore," she said.
Moore returned to interview her after the Pentagon informed her that her son had died in Iraq. She read his last letter to Moore's film crew. In it, her son questions why he and his fellow soldiers are in Iraq and his hope that Bush will not be re-elected. Later, Moore films her while she is attending a jobs conference in Washington, D.C. This is perhaps the most gut-wrenching part of the film, especially since her anguish is mirrored earlier in the film by an Iraqi woman who has just lost most of her family in the opening bombing campaign. You desperately want to reach out and hug both women, and somehow console them. Having buried my own son, who died of cancer at age 19, I can understand their despair.
After the film, I talked briefly with the couple seated next to us. He was originally from Missouri, Attorney General John Ashcroft's home state. He made not effort to camouflage his loathing and contempt of Ashcroft, referring to him in explicitly profane terms. As we stood inside the multiplex's spacious lobby, a long line formed for the 7 PM showing of "Fahrenheit." One man wore a tee shirt with the statement on the back, "Democracy is not a spectator sport."
Outside the theater, a pair of twenty-something's stood on the street corner with crude signs saying "Fahrenheit 9/11 is full of lies." I couldn't resist rolling down the window on my Honda Insight and asking them if they'd actually seen the film. The young man replied that he had. If so, he'd had to have seen either the 11 am or 2 pm showings, because we'd attended the 4:45 showing on the opening day. Somehow, I doubt he'd actually done so. Having carefully followed the entire 9/11 affair and the war in Iraq, I found nothing in Moore's film that I considered even a distortion, much less a "lie." Certainly Moore "editorializes" but that's the filmmaker's right. Virtually every point he makes has been subsequently confirmed by the 9/11 Commission and/or the wave of critical books by former White House insiders.
Moore uses network film footage, plus footage acquired both publicly and in the case of his interviews with soldiers in Iraq, covertly, to underscore his basic premise that the Bush administration took advantage of the America people in the wake of 9/11 and sold them an unnecessary war to divert attention away from his family's long business and personal relationship with the bin Laden family and the House of Saud. Besides a war in Iraq would be a great way to inflate the profits of defense contractors, some of his biggest campaign donors, and take care of unfinished business left over from his father's presidency. As one attendee to a workshop on how to profit from the war put it, "It's bad for the people, but good for business."
There were no big revelations in Fahrenheit. I already knew about Jim Bath and James Baker and the Carlyle Group, though the sight of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz sucking on his comb and putting spit on his unruly hair before an interview was predictably revolting. This is the pathetic little man who thought we could solve the Middle East's problems -- and feed our crude oil habit -- with a quick, cheap war?
Mercifully, Moore wisely decided to not replay the images of the planes hitting the World Trade Center. Instead, he chose to show us the reactions of people in the streets below, somber images I had never seen before. That compassionately light touch carries through much of the film when he focuses on the people hurt by Bush's imperial hubris; Americans and Iraqis, alike.
But when it comes to the target of his anger, he pulls no punches in castigating the empty suit that occupies the Oval Office and his incompetent minions; Condi Rice, Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft. He lets them hang themselves on their own words when in March, 2001 Powell says Iraq poses no threat to the USA. Later that summer, Rice says essentially the same thing. But following September 11, they begin to sing a different tune. Despite the fact that 15 of the 19 alleged hijackers are Saudi citizens, the administration's point people repeat the phrases, Saddam and Al Queda so frequently in the same breath that it was able to convince far too many of us that Iraq was somehow tied to September 11th. We now know there is no "credible" link between the two, but the dirty deed's been done.
Next week, the coalition officially hands over sovereignty to the Iraqi people, though what we're giving them is a nation in ruin, whose prospects aren't all that promising. The United States is likely to continue to have a large military presence in the country. We've built or occupied some 14 large military bases and airfields, which are intended to replace those we've vacated in Saudi Arabia, doing exactly what Osama bin Laden has been demanding all along.
By the way, Osama is still running around free, despite Bush's promise to "smoke" him out, "dead or alive."
Will the Iraqis ask (demand) we leave? I overheard an interesting telephone conversation while waiting to catch a flight in Chicago week before last. A father was talking to his son, who is in the Marine Corps Reserve and was calling from Camp Pendleton. He had been reactivated that day and driven down to the camp outside of San Diego in a Humvee convoy. The father later told me that this was his son's second deployment; he'd already been to Baghdad in the original invasion. He'd returned home and completed a semester of his Junior year, only to now be called back up, again. His father tried to encourage him -- not really caring who overheard him -- that once the Iraqis take charge of the country, they can ask the US to leave; and as far as this father was concerned, he hoped they kicked America out -- his words, not mine -- so his son wouldn't have to go back. I don't blame him. I'd feel the same way. And this guy is a Bush supporter who told me he is still convinced Hussein has hidden weapons of mass destruction, probably in Syria and Iran.
How did Bush put it? Fool me once... can't fool me again?
Do yourself, the nation and the planet a favor, see "Fahrenheit 9/11" and judge for yourself.
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The author is the editor and publisher of EVWorld.Com (
http://www.evworld.com)
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