I usually write about movies or books with no previous epinion reviews, or to buck a consensus with which I disagree. The combined rating of one hundred epinions about Michael Moore's " Fahrenheit 9/11" is the same (four stars) as mine. Although I have read many of the other reviews (and commented on more than a few of them), I don't recall any that focus on my disappointment with this very personal documentary.* (Apologies in advance if I've missed or forgotten someone's who did!).

The good

"Fahrenheit 9/11" may have opened some eyes to how George W. Bush was installed in the White House, the tangled and nefarious web of dealings between the Bush and the Saudi families, the curious nonreaction to the 9/11/2001 hijacked jets crashing into buildings, the series of lies by which the invasion of Iraq was justified, and recruiting tactics in blighted neighborhoods. What was news to me was the attempt by various African American members of Congress to contest the ratification of the election (after five justices of the US Supreme Court, all appointed by Republicans, awarded Florida's electoral votes to Bush/Cheney) and the pelting of the Bush motorcade en route to his inauguration.

The extended look at one woman (Lila Lipscomb) from Moore's hometown of Flint going from knee-jerk support of what Bush did in the name of combating terror (that is, abandoning rebuilding Afghanistan and hunting down Osama bin-Laden to take on Saddam Hussein who had tried to kill the senior Bush) to passionate opposition is affecting—and I do not think anyone could claim that Moore just suddenly took an interest in people from Flint (check out "Roger and Me" and "Bowling for Columbine").

The astonishing affectless non-response of Dubyah to the news of the attacks is very good at undercutting those who believe the man is decisive without anyone to tell him what to do.

The not-so-good

However, Moore's voice-over speculations of what Dubyah was thinking are counterproductive: sarcastic and melodramatic. I think showing the whole seven (or however many minutes) before he moved without any comment would have been more effective.

The documentary trods familiar ground in sarcastically recalling the Bush administration (especially Attorney General Ashcroft) treated the threat of al-Quaeda as a bogeyman trumped up by the previous administration and reminding viewers of how little time Dubyah spends at the White House. (It is less easy to show how unpleasant information and views challenging the assumptions of the neocon cabal that was bent on overthrowing Saddam Hussein long before 9/11/2001 are prevented from reaching a president remarkably incurious about the world and about views contrary to those of the persons to whom he has delegated running the country.)

It is also difficult to provide dramatic visuals of the complicated and very long-running mutual benefit society of the Bush family and the al-Saud family. As a result, those committed to maintaining the regime committed to freeing multinational corporations from taxes, environmental protection requirements, unions, etc. dismiss the importance of connections that have been very lucrative to the families whose wealth is based on oil and the suppression of democracy. It is interesting that it is the Secret Service that comes to inquire about filming across the street from the Saudi embassy in D. C., rather than D.C. police, but concern about "casing" such a site is not unreasonable.

While on the subject of Saudis, much of the Bushies' criticism of the movie honed in on the evacuation of members of the Osama clan and other Saudis on 9/13/2001. Moore shows flight lists on which the data is easily read by viewers. As someone who was scheduled to fly home on 9/12 and was not able to do so until 9/14, I know that flying resumed on 9/13 to a limited extent. The Osamas did not escape while US airspace was otherwise closed. But Moore does not claim they did, and the document shown on screen makes the date clear. It is also true that the FBI (an agency under the supervision of John Ashcroft) said they did not object to the relatives of the 9/11 mastermind removing themselves from surveillance and interrogation. This does not mean that it was wise, but, then, wisdom is not a quality anyone who has examined the record of the FBI and al-Quaeda in America would attribute to it. (The report on the investigation of CIA bungling has been blocked from release until after the election.)

The ambushing of congressmen to ask about their willingness to have their children enlist and volunteer for Iraq is unlikely to persuade any Bush supporters to defect. It is very much in the confrontational journalism style pioneered by "Sixty Minutes" over what seems like the last sixty years and used by Moore in his earlier movies. It is not very different from the way the military recruiters operate back in Flint, either.

And swinging back to early in the movie, the Bush relative involved in Fox News claiming that Bush had won Florida on Election Night is an interesting matter. There has been considerable criticism of the other networks for using exit polls to project Gore the winner (though there is not the slightest doubt that more people in Florida went to the polls and thought they had voted for Gore than thought they had voted for Bush, leaving aside the massive removal of registrations in heavily Democratic precincts). Given how close the official count was (and that the recount for the whole state conducted months later went the other way), why did all the networks follow Fox in projecting Bush as having carried Florida?

The dangerous

Those of us enraged by the policies (foreign and domestic) of the second Bush administration may be amused by seeing John Ashcroft croon, Dubyah mugging for the camera before beginning an address to the American people on invading Iraq, and Paul Wolfowitz spit-combing his hair, and the various "deer transfixed by headlights" images of Bush. Their supporters are presumably embarrassed for them. My problem with this is that in portraying men responsible for massive destruction of civil liberties and delusions about what would follow toppling the extremely nasty tyrant Saddam Hussein as buffoons, they are given something of a pass. That is, "They're too pathetic and stupid to know what they're doing." Well, they may look like clowns, but their are delusional men with extraordinary power who have done major damage to American security and democracy. Laughing at their total unhipness too easily leads to dismissing them as the serious threats they are (as, I'd argue, burlesques of Hitler and of buck-toothed caricatures of Japanese led to underestimating the capacity and resolve of enemies in World War II). Farcical portrayal of demagogues too easily leads to not recognizing how dangerous they are. Ersatz folksiness similarly provides camouflage (as it has for many a Southern politician and the likeable face of fascism shown by Andy Griffith in "A Face in the Crowd" and Broderick Crawford in "All the King's Men," to provide political movie points of reference.)

People who are regarded as dunces are not held accountable for their actions. Inarticulate as Bush is (especially when not supplied with a script), he is not stupid. He is lazy, dangerously narrow-minded, pathologically incurious about other views, and pathologically removed from contact with anyone who might disagree with him (except for the 4.5 hours of presidential debates that visibly exhausted him)—but he is not stupid. He and his administration are a menace to the world and the invasion of Iraq is a disastrous diversion from combating terrorism. He/they have made the US isolated, devoid of credibility in advocating democracy (not least through the unholy alliance with Vladimir Putin), and have incubated more terrorists in Iraq and throughout the Islamic world. The campaign of fear has kept half the American populace in support of the Bush administration's failed policies. Moore is actually quite good in pointing to some of the absurdities of the heightened terror alerts, but it seems that they have been effective and he has not, 'cause Bush's support should be in the 10-15 percent range not in the 50 ± 3 percent range!

---

* A documentary shows something that happened. From "Nanook of the North" on, there has been controversy about staging for the camera. There is very little that was staged for the camera in " Fahrenheit 9/11" (even the ambushing congressmen is consistent with everyday journalistic practice). One of the historically greatest documentaries, "Triumph of the Will," is a documentary in that it shows what happened in and in preparation for a large Nazi demonstration in Nuremberg. To some extent, like the president's daily "photo ops," there was planning to accommodate the cameras, but (unlike most of the president's "photo ops"), what was shown was something that happened for reasons other than recording and transmitting photographs of it. I don't think that Bush, Ashcroft, Wolfowitz, et al. were performing for inclusion in Moore's film—nor were they secretly filmed. The Republican National Convention was more like "Triumph of the Will" than " Fahrenheit 9/11" is, and most of the denigrations of "Fahrenheit 9/11 that invoke "Triumph of the Will" seem to have been made by people who have not seen "Triumph of the Will" and no nothing of the history or criterial features of documentary film.

P.S. This review is based on seeing the movie in a (suburban) theater, not on the DVD, so I don't say anything about bonus features.


Recommended: Yes