Fahrenheit 11/9 Criticism: Michael Moore Saving No One, Especially the Liberals

Jared Kushner liked Michael Moore's documentary about the health care crisis Sicko. He loved it so much that he organized a party after the premiere of the film in 2007. The future son-in-law and senior advisor to the future president praised Moore as a journalist, highlighting the filmmaker's ability to build. a compelling argument and bring to light important issues in American life.

A clip of Kushner's salvation to Moore appears at the beginning of the documentary's last feature film, Fahrenheit 11/9, which debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2018 before an exuberant crowd on Thursday night. Red bandanas were distributed late in the film, Moore calls the public to adopt the red bandana as a symbol, in the spirit of those worn by miners in favor of unions in the 1920s – and some One in the crowd shouted "Michael for the President!"

The thing is, Kushner was right. Moore pleads with passion and vigor for his leftist political views, often building his case by mixing overwhelming archive footage and expert interviews with his own antics and sneaky commentary. The effect is a bit of a gust of wind, dragging you and forcing you to nod, without asking much of what has not been seen on the screen.

It's effective, and Moore's sources embedded in his story are generally reliable. But in some ways, it may seem free and associative, and the injection of his own character into his films – particularly the sarcasm of his commentary and the flippancy he uses as an interview technique – can age very quickly.

His films are both compelling and infuriating, and more recent offerings have inspired shy critics, even from critics who share his political views. His one-man show 2017 Broadway, The terms of my waiver, has been looking at the worst of these trends and has garnered bad reviews, in a city where his political tendencies could be viewed as shared by most viewers. With Moore, mileage varies considerably.

In particular, the self-mythologization has always been his Achilles heel, so the criticisms were numerous in June, when the title of his next project was announced to be Fahrenheit 11/9 – a reference to his 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 9/11who criticized the George W. Bush administration and the war on terror. This film won the Palme d'Or in Cannes and became the most publicized documentary of all time. Was Moore really about to make a comparison between the events of September 11, 2001 and September 11, 2016 – the day after Donald Trump's election to the next President of the United States?

It was. But the film is far better than the baggage that comes with its title may imply. Moore still suffers episodes of self-aggrandizement and sneaky generalization. But they feel uncomfortable and in a good way. This is because, for much of the film, Moore gives voice to people whose voices are not so easy to hear or who have had to fight for a voice.

Fahrenheit 11/9 is attached to the election of Trump, but attack to a lot more

Fahrenheit 11/9 It's definitely a big fight against Trump – not an original approach to documentary filmmaking nowadays. But it also does what few political films seem ready to do in the Trump era: it dismantles powerfully (if not systematically) idealistic notions about improving things before Trump's arrival.

The actuality of the film may be the current administration, but its target is that of self-satisfied liberals who are more or less confident in the system. Early on, Moore got involved with a series of mea culpas for the people he worked with – Kushner, Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway and Trump himself (on Roseanne Barr's talk show, no less).

And when Fahrenheit 11/9 turns to the election itself, she is less interested in Trump as a cause and more as a symptom of national disillusionment, money-driven elections and apathy which in turn results for the political process. (Forty percent of eligible Americans did not even vote in the 2016 elections).

Courtesy of TIFF

Moore chases everyone close to the president, even insinuating very early that there is something very inappropriate in his relationship with his daughter Ivanka. He even ends up comparing not only Trump to Hitler, but also one of Trump's speeches above the video of one of the Hitlers. But he reserves his sharpest, sharpest and best-built critics against what he sees as a ruthless editorial democrat and, which might surprise some viewers, Barack Obama, and especially the Obama visit. in Flint, Michigan. in 2016.

Moore is from Flint, and the best sequences of Fahrenheit 11/9 are about the ongoing water crisis in the city as well as the political situation that led it, like more or less by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, whom Moore repeatedly calls a "criminal".

the Fahrenheit 11/9the first in Toronto, there were audible tweets in the theater several times, but perhaps the strongest came when the movie detailed how Snyder ordered that the water from Flint's General Motors plant be replaced by water. while leaving the population with a contaminated supply, the government continued to insist that it was perfectly acceptable to drink, despite convincing evidence to the contrary.

The Flint section of the film is exasperating but also enlightening; Moore lets whistleblowers, doctors, residents and local law enforcement agencies get angry while making the distinction between Snyder and Trump, which is at least worrisome.

But he has a more important point. There is optimism everywhere Fahrenheit 11/9, based on Moore's belief that, on the whole, the American people ("we", as he says in the film's narrative, knowing who his audience is) have progressive views more in line with the political trend spectrum that all that Trump represents. (He supports this belief with a series of polls on health care, taxes, gun control, immigration, abortion and other issues, mainly from 2018 onwards. .)

If democracy worked in America, he suggests – if people really felt that their vote meant something – so maybe the nation could follow a path that would lead to something positive.

Moore conscientiously attacks the peculiarities of the system, such as the electoral college and the super-delegate system of the Democratic Party. But it seems certain that grassroots activism will change the country. In addition to his own activism at Flint, he highlights the Parkland Movement in Florida, the teens and the march for our lives, and the teacher strikes that began in West Virginia and spread to other states.

Is he right? It is too early to tell. After infusing a good part of Fahrenheit 11/9 Hopefully, clearly seeking to inspire the public to truly believe that things can change, Moore returns to a darker tone. He reminds viewers of the seemingly enlightened and free-spirited historical context in which Adolf Hitler intervened, less than a century ago, and his thesis is clear: it means: dehumanizing large groups of citizens and dedication to a charismatic leader. happen here, and he can already to have come.

Fahrenheit 11/9 is still a messy movie, but it's an energetic movie

Like a movie, Fahrenheit 11/9 is wrong. The film sometimes looks like a crash course on what has happened since 2016, a kind of album of "worst hits" that desperately seeks to reach all points and bring them together in a unifying theory.

We have Trump, Steve Bannon ("I do not agree with [Moore’s] Politics, "Bannon is shown saying," but I think he's doing a great movie "), birtherism, Central Park Five, Roger Wings, Bill O'Reilly, Mark Halperin, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose , Roseanne, "the media" (and especially the New York Times), Trump's "treason" meeting with Putin in Helsinki in July 2018, Bill Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Flint, Parkland, Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Colin Kaepernick, Nazis and Gwen Stefani the reason why Trump was a presidential candidate in the first place. (That, according to Moore, Trump's discovery that Stefani made more money out of The voice that he did it on L & # 39; s apprentice That made Trump announce his candidacy, prompted NBC to see its popularity. He returned, but the wheels started to turn.)

It's been about two hours, and the lash is considerable. It's possible that Moore has been trying to emulate the chaos of the information cycle over the past two years, but much of the film does not hold that much to leave you feeling a lot.

At times, it seems that some important arguments have been made in an argument against Trump, because Mr. Moore is not sure that people would have cared otherwise. (Whether he is right or not, I can not say it.) I especially felt that, given Moore's stature among socially conscious audiences and his personal connection to Flint, he spent less time to write instead, did a feature film on Flint alone, deepening his problems and their potential solutions.

Courtesy of TIFF

Yet, every time he emerges and hands the microphone to those who do not have the recognition of their name, Moore is an effective filmmaker. He knows who to talk to and he does not just focus on big names. Voters and teachers of public schools in West Virginia; a veterinarian in Iraq and various leftist candidates for the Congress (including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib); the last Nuremberg public prosecutor alive; whistleblowers and doctors and parents and residents of Flint; and many other people who do not make the headlines as easily as Trump are part of it. Fahrenheit 11/9. With their help, Moore weaves a tapestry not with hope, but with optimistic indignation.

Fahrenheit 11/9 will not convince Trump's Loyalists to reconsider. But that does not interest him. The #NeverTrump conservatives are also not likely to watch the film, even though it may offer some surprising common ground, although Moore's critique of the Democratic Party comes from his democratic socialist views.

Instead, the film focuses on not letting the more natural audience go easily. He criticizes the facile generalizations, the historicity and even the tribalism of a liberal audience (the Obama and Clinton critics in particular do not hold back). He suggests that the country is a disaster not because of these other people, but because the theater people are not even engaged enough in their own ideals to feel uncomfortable and do something – unlike to professors from West Virginia who remained on strike after their leaders found a compromise they would not agree to, or the teenagers who organized the March for our lives.

Courtesy of TIFF

This means that there is something in this film that irritates everyone. And it is certainly true that a more focused approach has finally been more effective in dismantling its opponents. After all, everything Mr. Moore said has been broadcast publicly by the media for years and that is the flood of information that has sent many people into a spiral of apathy, overwhelmed by everything that needs to be done and all that is needed. terrible. Should we more indignation in 2018?

Moore thinks that America needs more indignation – but more concentrated contempt. It's useless to hate Trump, he poses. What we need to do is to "get rid of all the rotten system that gave us Trump," as he declares towards the end of Fahrenheit 11/9. And for him, this effort will begin with the "real" America, the people to whom he gives more and more the microphone.

Fahrenheit 11/9 premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and opens on September 21st.