Fahrenheit 9/11 Review
by Matt Noller (imgiphted AT bellsouth DOT net)July 2nd, 2004
Fahrenheit 9/11
A film review by Matt Noller
Rating: ***1/2 (out of ****)
There's no doubt what Michael Moore is trying to accomplish with Fahrenheit 9/11. He is infuriated with the way President George W. Bush is leading this country, and he wants to compose an argument as to why Dubya is an incompetent ruler who led us into a needless war in order to fulfill his own selfish agenda. In doing so, Moore has collected a number of facts and disturbing connections that combine to form a movie that every open-minded American needs to see. It is a testament to Moore's considerable skill as a filmmaker that a movie made up of well-documented facts could be one of the most involving, provocative, and powerful films of the year.
Of course, I already agree with Moore's politics. There is no question in my mind that the Bush Presidency has been a disaster, and that Moore's allegations are at least somewhat true. Some would argue that of course I'm going to love the movie, but I say otherwise; I'm the choir that Moore is preaching to. I don't need to be told these things - hell, I already knew most of them - and the fact that the film still disturbed and upset me shows me what an amazing accomplishment it is.
In order to get his argument across, Moore has collected some disturbing information. Mere days after the September 11th attacks, large groups of important Saudi Arabians, including members of the Bin Laden family. Why? What, Moore correctly asks, would the response have been had Bill Clinton shipped Timothy McVeigh's family out of the country following the Oklahoma City bombings? Moore then proceeds to drudge up an incredible number of connections between the Bushes, the Saudis, and the Bin Ladens that simply cannot be random. It cannot be a coincidince that James Bath, a longtime money manager for the Bin Ladens millions, has been blacked out of Bush's military record where the two are mentioned as being close. It isn't just grasping at straws to say that the Carlyle investment group, which counts Bush Sr. as an employee and George W. as a friend also counts the Bin Ladens as million-dollar investors. Both the Bushes and the Saudis stand to make a good deal of money out of the current wars being waged. The Taliban had met with Bush on friendly terms not too long before Afghanistan was invaded, and military action was taken just as an oil pipeline to the Caspian Sea was being built. Are Moore's ultimate conjectures true? Maybe, maybe not; but no one can deny that the facts that he presents are chilling in their implications.
I'm perfectly aware of the way Moore works. I know he picks and chooses his footage carefully in order to cause the ideal reaction. But I don't know who decided that his films should be called documentaries - it sure wasn't him. And although he certainly makes no pretenses about being biased (unlike Fox News, which gets a much-needed drumming by Moore), Fahrenheit 9/11 probably contains far more real journalism than his other films. Three segments stand out. The aforementioned string of Bush/Bin Laden connections is one. The second is footage, taken by a teacher, of Bush in an elementary school classroom on September 11. He enters the class soon after the first plane hits; understandable, just about everyone thought the first collision was an accident. But when an advisor informs Bush of the second plane, he continues to read to the class for about seven minutes until he is told that maybe he should leave. His facial expression in this footage is one of the most lingering images of the film, a look of utter fear and confusion that shows a man that cannot make an important decision without being told what to do.
The final, and most powerful, segment of the film deals with the war in Iraq. Moore disagrees with the war, but spends surprisingly little time on how we were sent in under false pretenses. Oh, that's brought up, but what Moore is more interested in is the effect the war has on the lives of those involved. He shows us footage from the war that we will never see on the so-called "liberal" media: clips of Iraqi civilians and children burned and maimed. It is very graphic, disturbing, and necessary; in ten minutes of this footage we learn more about the terrible effects of war that we would watching CNN for a month. Moore interviews soldiers who play heavy metal music while driving tanks through the city - "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor" and "The Roof is on Fire" are two songs mentioned by soldiers, because they "fit" the war. We are shown other soldiers who are against the war, who think they are over there for no reason.
And then Moore introduces us to Lila Lipscomb, a social worker with a son in the war. In the first series of interviews, she is gung-ho about the war and the military. Then she received a telephone call telling her her son was killed in a helicopter crash. She reads us his final letter, in which he pleads his mother to vote against Bush. The sudden change in Lipscomb's opinions add a degree of intimacy to the foreign subject of war. Very few of us can imagine what it must be like to have a son die in a war, and to see the effect of that is devastating.
As much as I would like to, I cannot justify giving Fahrenheit 9/11 four stars. The reason for this is simple: the film is not timeless. If Bush loses the coming election, it will be unneeded in December. If he wins, it will be unneeded in 2008. Fahrenheit 9/11 is not a film that will have the same effect in years to come as it does now, but at the present moment, in the summer of 2004, it is a masterpiece.
See more reviews at www.uhmovies.co.nr or e-mail me at
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