the Greater Nomadic Council

Farenheit $22 Million – A Review of the #1 Movie in America

First, let's get one thing straight – this film is a documentary. Those who have argued, in the runup to the release, that it was not, that it was some other manner of creature, made the assertion on the grounds that Micheal Moore produces biased films designed to advance his own political agenda. Even before the film's release it was painfully obvious that these arguments were, first and foremost, based on elaborate and counterintuitive convolutions of the word "documentary," interpretations that would have essentially required any film worthy of the label to be made by throwing a dart at a map, setting up a camera at that location pointed in a random direction, then releasing two hours of the unedited footage: anything else apparently constitutes bias, and no documentary can, according to the anti-Moore camp, be influenced by its maker's opinions. These theories were, equally obviously, motivated by a political agenda at least as overbearing as Moore's own. By saying "It's not a documentary," what those who originated the argument (and equally those who fell victim to and repeated it) were really saying was "This film is nothing but the rambling fantasy of a liberal nut – there's no need for you to pay attention to it or take it at all seriously."

But now that the film is out, we don't need to rebut these arguments by referring people to Webster's or digging for their own dark motives. All we need to do is cajole them into actually watching the movie, which is as firmly within the formal tradition of the documentary as anything this side of "Wild Kingdom." Moore himself appears in the film a scant two or three times, and there's only one brief interlude of one of his trademark 'stunts' – in this case, he attempts to get members of Congress to enlist their children in the military, with predictable results. "Roger and Me" this is not – Moore's personality comes through in the filmmaking, but not in his physical presence and direct pronouncements. You don't even hear very much of him during the multitude of interviews with Ex-FBI agents, congressional dissidents, and foreign policy experts that form the core of the film.

For many leftists, Fahrenheit 9/11 will be an abridged recap of known facts and figures, starting with the theft of the Florida election and moving forward from there. Its main value for me, aside from the concentration of all of this material into one convenient package, was being able to see the main players in action. It may be that I already know the story and have formed opinions on the characters, but Moore's footage (including most notoriously Bush getting literally shifty-eyed just moments before announcing the war in Iraq) provided me with a deeply disturbing window into the souls of the current administration. Bush's verbal incompetence has been well documented, but Moore focuses instead on his overwhelming venality, his absolutely habitual reliance on his name and position to carry him through with little or no effort on his part. From "Bring it on" to "Now watch this drive!" to "I'm here to take somebody's order – whatta you want, Stretch?", Bush's attempts at folksiness come across, in the context of the corruption that Moore covers, as crass attempts to alternately gloss over his ignorance of even the most basic policy information, and his gross abuse of the American people's trust.

The instance of this abuse that Moore focuses on most closely is the array of deep and disturbing connections between the Bush dynasty and Saudi Arabian money men – and the bin Laden family in particular. I won't recap the intricacies here, but the statement that the bin Ladens have collectively invested roughly a billion and a half dollars in the various endeavors of the Bush clan is well supported. The specific connections between Saudi money and Shrub's early oil ventures are particularly damning – why, after all, would investors from one of the world's most oil-rich nations invest so heavily in a company whose main product was dry wells, if not to gain access to the CEO's vice-presidential pater? In return for these regular and vast injections of venture capital, Moore outlines the levels of access the Saudis were granted, including most notoriously the acceleration of the bin Laden's exodus from the U.S. on September 13th, and the explicit and sickening orders given to the CIA and FBI to stop pursuing leads that pointed to any Saudi complicity in terror attacks. It is on the matter of those September 13th flights that Moore seems to come closest to bending the facts; He explicitly states (and shows in official documents) that the flights did not leave until September 13th, when airspace was re-opened, but the phrasing of these statements is smudgy enough to imply that the bin Ladens got to ignore the line, rather than just getting to move to the front of it. It's a slight slip, but it has already proven to be enough for Bush's desperate legion of toadies to latch onto as a means to discredit the film, and as such it would've been preferable if Moore had been more cautious.

From the basis of the Saudi connections, Moore goes on to paint a broader picture of the frankly nauseating entanglements between Republican power brokers and, it would seem, anyone willing to wave dollar bills in their faces. The Carlyle group and Halliburton controversies are fairly well-trod paths, with Moore's reporting based largely on the previous work of Greg Palast. One new wrinkle came in the form of video of a contingent of frankly thuggish Taliban officials visiting the Bush governor's mansion in early 2000, as Bush worked to burnish their image and smooth negotiations that would have led to a moneymaking natural gas pipeline being dug through Afghanistan. As hopefully most of you are already aware, it was Carlyle group adviser Hamid Karzai who was ultimately awarded the presidency of Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion, and the pipeline deal was among the first items to cross his desk. All of this is presented using documentary footage and copious documentation. Why, it must be asked, has the Democratic Party not made greater hay of this particularly egregious example of our president blithely setting aside any pretense to supporting democratic ideals when it was convenient and potentially profitable for his friends?

The second facet of the film's message is much more overtly emotional, but the emotion that Moore presents to us is still absolutely factual, and these are facts that may have been even more effectively suppressed by the Bush administration and the media than was the esoteric new-fangled bribery of our government by a foreign power. What Moore presents to us is the utterly devastating anguish of a woman who lost her son in a Black Hawk crash in Iraq. Part of a strong military heritage, including her father, brothers, and daughter in addition to her lost son, this woman is presented by Moore as representative of the segment of the population that has been perhaps most victimized by Bush's war, and in fact ill-conceived wars through history: the working-class patriots who give their children to defend a country which does little to reward their gifts. Though it takes the death of her son, this woman wakes up to the ways in which she and her family have been taken for a ride by the leaders of the free world, and the emotional peak of the film comes when Moore films her visit to Capitol Hill. It's both discomfiting and revealing to see this very sane woman energized by the marginally coherent anti-Bush screeds of an addled homeless woman – she is obviously hungry for any chance to speak the language of those who have seen through the veil. It is conversely invigorating to see her respond with eloquent anger to another woman who describes the anti-Bush claims as "a setup." While it's impossible to forget her pain for even a moment, I'm sure I'm not alone in slightly envying her response to the woman: "My son is dead. Tell me that's a setup."

I'll be the first to admit that "Fahrenheit" is far from a great film. Despite the occasional funny juxtaposition and one or two more aggressive moments, it conforms to the standard documentary format to an almost stultifying degree. As noted, this was absolutely necessary for the film to withstand its critics and have its intended effect, but I imagine it will also limit its long-term relevance. Made with a very definite and timely agenda, it's uncertain whether "Fahrenheit" will ultimately stand as anything like the definitive account of the subject at hand. Further, with any less compelling subject (say, frogs), it would not have been nearly as gripping – it might even have been trite. But as it is, at this moment in time, the film is absolutely vital, whatever side of the aisle you're on. I'm not sure whether its current success will be sustained, though, as I'm not sure that many who still support Bush will willingly go into the theatres. The pain and righteous rage of a dead soldier's mother is just one of a multitude of things in this film that those who persist in supporting Bush and his cabal would prefer to simply ignore, slapping their hands over their ears while shouting "It's not a documentary!" like some alchemical mantra that will somehow transmute bullshit into fluffy clouds. As the box-office returns this weekend have shown, though, there's a substantial chunk of America out there that's willing to listen.