Fahrenheit 9/11
review by M.Faust
A survey released last weekend reports that,
with more than four months to go before the
presidential election,an unprecedented pro-
portion of Amercans say they have no doubt
as to who they will vote for.With voters to battle over,the real fight will be for
the candidates to energize their bases and
make sure that as many of them as possible
get out to vote.
That may or may not be accurate (how many
surveys ever are?),but if it is,Michael Moore Â’s
controversial Fahrenheit 9/11 may be more
useful than I felt when I was watching it.I
don Â’t know that Moore Â’s film will change the
mind of anyone planning to vote for George
W.Bush in November,though I Â’m hard
pressed to put myself in the mind of such a
person.Obviously some people just aren Â’t
paying attention —and those are the people
I was hoping Moore was trying to reach.But
Fahrenheit 9/11 is more effective at summing
up what anyone who has ventured a peek past
television news in the past few years (and cer-
tainly all regular readers of this publication)
already knows about the accomplishments of
the Bush regime than it is as a primer to the
uninformed and otherwise misled.
The title,for anyone who doesn Â’t recognize
the reference,is a play on Ray Bradbury Â’s
novel Fahrenheit 451 ,about a future society in
which books are burned as a form of social
control.Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature
at which paper burns;“Fahrenheit 9/11 ,” went
an apparently abandoned slogan for the
new film,is “the temperature at which truth
burns.”
Let me say right off the bat that I like Michael
Moore a lot.Those who don Â’t call him a muck-
raker (a charge he probably wouldn Â’t deny),
accuse him of juggling facts and of having an
“agenda.”But no documentary filmmaker is
ever wholly objective,and Moore Â’s agenda
is at least an honorable one.As for playing
loose with the facts,the allegations against
him are usually petty nitpicking about things
that don Â’t change his central arguments.In a
better world he wouldn Â’t do it;still,it Â’s nice
to see the conservative right being the ones
on the defensive for a change.At his worst,
Moore can be a bully boy,but he Â’s a bully boy
for a side that has damn few of them against
a side that is stinking with them.
Maybe high expectations account
for my moderate disappointment
with Fahrenheit 9/11 .After years
of watching the Bush administra-
tion lie and obfuscate in order to
steer this country into a war,while
the mainstream media parroted
what it was told and ignored evi-
dence to the contrary,I and most
people I know yearned for some-
one with access to a wide audi-
ence to make a lucid,concise case
compiling the last four years.It Â’s
a task that overwhelms my abili-
ties (have you ever tried to talk to
someone who believes that Bush
is a great man because he stopped
Saddam Hussein from arming Al
Queda with nuclear and chemical
weapons to use against the Unit-
ed States?)so I shouldn Â’t blame
Moore for also falling short.
Fahrenheit 9/11 is a more or less chronologi-
cal indictment of Bush Â’s presidency.It begins
with the election of 2000,which I think was
an unfortunate choice on Moore Â’s part.He
rehashes how the post-election was fought,
manipulated and ultimately decided.There Â’s
no doubt in my mind that these are events
that need to be repeated over and over un-
til more people realize that the election was
stolen by the party in power.But the begin-
ning of this movie isn Â’t the place to do it:it Â’s
a sequence that will polarize audiences,put-
ting many on the offensive.
(Those very folk may not even notice that
Moore often takes the Democratic party to
task for letting their Republicans roll over
them so easily;detailing the post-election
struggle,he reminds us how passive Gore et
al were in that heated month.)
Moore argues that Bush Â’s presidency was foun-
dering until September 11.(His depiction of
that day,incidentally,is restrained,tasteful
and very effective.)The film Â’s first coup is a
doozy.When the planes hit the World Trade
Center,Bush was making an appearance at a
kindergarten reading class in Florida.Moore
found a video of Bush taken by a teacher.It
shows him receiving the news of the second
plane from an aide,then continuing to sit
in front of the class as the children read for
nearly ten minutes,apparently with no idea
what to do.
Looking at his blank visage,you can Â’t help
but wonder:just how did this poor,unquali-
fied fool get into this of fice?That Â’s one thing
that Moore doesn Â’t address.He talks about
Bush Â’s past,from his no-show military career
through his business ventures.But there Â’s no
discussion of how Bush got into public of fice
or who his backers are;no mention at all of
his career as Texas governor.
What Moore does spend some time on is the
Bush family Â’s business links to the bin Laden
family and other Saudi oil millionaires,who
have invested as much as $1.4 billion in Bush-
af filiated businesses.He notes what has been
reported openly but which many Americans
seem not to know:a few days after September
11,2001,while American air space was of ficial-
ly shut down,30 government and commercial
planes were used to transport members of the
bin Laden family and several hundred other
Saudis out of the United States.
It Â’s worthy that Moore is working to bring
this information to a wider audience.Still,he
hasn Â’t learned anything that wasn Â’t reported
several years ago (albeit only minimally in the
mainstream press.).It Â’s a story that cries out
for some real investigative digging,which is
either beyond Moore Â’s abilities or his time lim-
its —a thorough indictment of the Bush gov-
ernment could hardly be expected to fit into
a two hour film.
Former national security advisor Richard
Clarke tells Moore that when he was working
in the administration it was clear to him that
Bush Â’s advisors were looking for an excuse to
go after Iraq,and that the events of September
11 were seen as that opportunity.He character-
izes the invasion of Afghanistan as a formality
on the way to the real thing.
But the film does little to speculate just why
all of Bush Â’s men are so obsessed with Iraq.
(Many of them have been for years.)Moore ex-
plains the war in terms of oil and as an excuse
to maintain an Orwellian campaign of fear,
where the government realizes that frightened
people are easier to control.
The final section of the film is both the most
moving and the weakest.Moore concentrates
on the effect the Iraq war has had on the sol-
diers who have fought it.It Â’s impossible not to
be moved by the sight of a hospital filled with
young men missing hands,arms or legs,or by
the grief of a mother whose world view was
changed when her son died fighting what he
called in his last letter home “a meaningless
war.”Still,these sequences speak more to the
horror of all war than they do to this misbegot-
ten con flict in general.I hate to say this,but I
think Moore included some of this to work on
the emotions of any viewers who may have been
otherwise untouched by his history lesson.
Unlike Moore Â’s other films,he doesn Â’t use
much humor.The few scenes where he does
stage consciousness-raising stunts a la his sa-
tirical television shows seem forced,even
silly.There are moments of bitter humor,but
they Â’re quick (and probably more effective for
it).
Despite my reservations,I hope that everyone
makes an effort to see this film,if only to prove
that Americans are concerned about the path
we Â’ve been led down.Moore obviously wants
nothing less than to have Bush voted out of of-
fice.I share that hope,and so I would love to
learn that Fahrenheit 9/11 opens the eyes of a
lot of people to things that they didn Â’t previ-
ously know.More importantly,I fervently hope
that it will spark some more heated debate on
the merits of Moore Â’s accusations in the main-
stream media,which has abrogated its duties
in recent years to a shameful degree.
A note about the filmÂ’s R rating:Is it deserved?
Perhaps,but a lot of films that are less appro-
priate for kids regularly get a PG-13.There is
some profanity,as well as a beheading and an
official execution,which is seen from so far
away that I wouldnÂ’t have known what was go-
ing on without the explanatory subtitle.There
are scenes of the effects of war,but as Moore
properly notes,teenagers who are old enough
to be recruited by the military deserve to see
what they may been getting into.If the R rat-
ing stands,I would hope that theater owners
ignore it,at least letting teens in to see it.It Â’s
not like the MPAA ratings are law and it would
be interesting to see what would happen if they
were challenged.
