[ad_1]
Director Michael Moore speaks at the "State of the People's Union" event a day before President Trump's State of the Union address to Congress in New York on January 29, 2018. Moore is preparing to publish "Fahrenheit 11/9" on the state of the country. (Reuters / Darren Ornitz) (DARREN ORNITZ / Reuters)
TORONTO – On the eve of a critical election in 2004, Michael Moore released "Fahrenheit 9/11," a hand grenade from a movie that has made many stunned liberals and many apoplectic curators.
Here we go again.
Moore at the Toronto International Film Festival unveiled Thursday "Fahrenheit 11/9", a spiritual sequel to his Bush-era bomb, which remains the most publicized documentary in history. The new film, which the Washington Post examined very early, uses techniques similar to those of its predecessor: to use the colorful incredulous voice of its director to denounce the complicity of the political system and perhaps influence an election.
But unlike this film, a Republican president is only one of Moore's targets. As many shots as he takes to President Trump, the provocative filmmaker is eager to denounce a Democratic establishment that, he says, has not done enough to push the White House back or advance a progressive agenda.
"One of the reasons I did this film is that I came to the conclusion that the old Democratic Party guard is a bigger obstacle to social progress than Trump," Moore said in a statement. interview. "Because they take half measures; because they are indebted to the same money and the same interests. "
Moore was in a hotel suite in Toronto just hours before Fahrenheit was featured at the festival, giving one of his first interviews about what will certainly be the case at the annual gathering of the Fahrenheit. Hollywood. The director has created several of his efforts in Toronto in the past of September, including "Where To Invade Next", his 2015 travelogue featuring innovative social policies. But it is unlikely that many of them will reach the impact of "11/9", which arrives at a busier time in America – and with a much more loaded message.
The film, which will be released in some 1,500 theaters on September 21, tackles a simple but sprawling question: "How did … we arrived here? The following movie can be a bit of a hodgepodge of America's potential problems and solutions. But it seeks to build energy that lacks thematic homogeneity, and by the time it is over, it is possible that many people find it alarming and provocative. Depending on your policy, you may find this inspiring.
Moore moves between topics such as Trump; progressive outside politicians such as congressional candidates Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Richard Ojeda and Rashida Tlaib; the West Virginia teacher strike; the gun control activism of teenagers affected by shooting at the Parkland School in Florida; the missteps of the democratic establishment; and the history of tyrants (and their future potential, especially in the United States).
The water crisis in Flint, Michigan, his hometown, is closest to his heart. "When do you have the country's highest water bill in the poorest city in the country, who has time to protest? You have to feed your family, "says one citizen, highlighting one of the many challenges facing the city after the contamination of its water supply.
In one of the more recent newspapers, April Cook-Hawkins, who was working for Genesee County, Michigan, said his superiors had asked him to change the medical data to make the water safe. Moore thinks that this should give rise to an investigation, up to the Michigan Republican governor, Rick Snyder. Cook-Hawkins told The Post after the screening that she had lost her job when she blew up the whistle and she is still fighting a legal battle against the county leaders' incident. "I just want to shed light on what happened there," she said about her decision to come forward. "Because we still do not have clean water, but nobody seems to realize it."
The link between all these topics is what Moore suggests is a crisis of habitual politics – a desire not to tackle problems as much as to crush them, often in the service of corporate interests. Effectively,. Moore argues that Trump was the wrong solution to the right problem. The real solution, he says, lies in the popular progressivity of Ocasio-Cortez and Ojeda.
In fact, Moore saves some of his most unexpected criticisms for traditional Democrats, highlighting, through footage from the 2016 National Democratic Congress, how Hillary Clinton won the nomination of the superelelegates of many states where rival Bernie Sanders had won the primary.
And he has strong words for Trump's predecessor.
"The worst thing that President Obama has done has been to pave the way for President Trump," said Moore in the film, citing The "Imprison[ment] whistleblowers, "drone strikes and shelling of civilian populations" and "deporting a record number of immigrants and separating them from their children". It shows an Obama scene drinking water in Flint. previous years because it suggested that the problem had been solved. He also attacks Obama for accepting donations from Wall Street organizations such as Goldman Sachs.
The left-wing media, including The Post, are not immune to criticism, notably through an interview with Sanders in which he claims that major news organizations are mainly interested in promoting the interests of the rich. . Moore also discovers a clip in which the assaulted CBS CEO, Leslie Moonves, speaking of Trump's ascent during the 2016 campaign, said: "This may not be good for you. America, but it's good for CBS.
The film's power seems to come from how much Moore lets others be the hero. "One of the interesting things about this movie is that Michael Moore is not at the center of his work," said Thom Powers, who directs documentary programming at TIFF. "He lets others be agents of change."
"11/9" (the title refers to the day after the election of Trump) aims to show a battle between optimism and pessimism about this country – a fight that Moore led internally.
"The film acts as a warning siren and also functions as the" matrix "," he said. "We are looking for the portal."
In what will certainly be one of its most controversial segments, the film spends a lot of time drawing parallels between Trump and Adolf Hitler, including a scene in which Moore associates the audio with a Trump's speech to a video of the Nazi leader.
At the question of knowing he really believed in comparison, Moore said, "Trump is already on the road to Nazism," then added, "Trump is not Hitler and Hitler is not Trump. But then, you can not say that fascism does not teach us lessons, that there are no parallels we can draw. He noted that the 1930s Germany, like the modern United States, was an educated democracy Moreover, the film uses clever editing techniques to suggest the Nazi war against the press, a tightening of power and the demonization of the opposition echo Trump's Republican Party.
"But I think we have to kiss Trump," Moore said in the interview. "People who read this will say what you mean" Embrace Trump "But we have to kiss him We have to listen to him He says lies and he tells the truth at the same time You look at the goals of. what he wanted to accomplish, and he finished [many] d & # 39; them. He was very good at looking at his faults and we laugh more and become more indignant and do not notice how much he and Betsy DeVos and the type of inside are doing to pull things out of the interior. You must act as if he was going to be reelected in 2020, because there is a good chance that he will be reelected. You must act like Patton acted with Rommel – he studied it. Because Patton beat Rommel.
As for the brazen juxtapositions of Trump and Hitler, Moore laughed. "I am a satirist. I could not help it.
(Asked about what he thought about the Anvil-written opinion in the New York Times inside the Trump White House, Moore said he thought there was a good possibility that Trump himself mandated to write it, had a history of leaking to the press, sometimes even as his own public relations man. "There's a demarcation line out there, at the end, about adults in the room, what we want to hear and he gives it to us. ")
It remains to be seen if "11/9" will reach a progressive audience – or even mobilize those who are already in this tent. The premiere brought long ovations to Moore and the stage subjects, including Cook-Hawkins and several Parkland teens. But theater documentaries have evolved a lot since 2004, and even with the resurgence this summer thanks to documentaries like 'RBG', the question is whether consumers will want to pay for a political reporter in a sea of theirs.
Yet Moore said he made the film because he thought it could have an impact. "Twice in 16 years, our team won the popular vote and did not enter the White House," he said in the interview. "We must take back the Democratic Party. Do not start a third party. Do you know how long people would argue? We spent three months discussing the logo. No, it's just a matter of taking over. "
A little later, during the screening, Moore took the stage and nicknamed today's teens "Mass Shot Generation".
"The generation of hope!" shouted a spectator of the audience.
"No, I'm against hope," Moore said. "Hope was at the time with Obama, I am for a generation of action."
[ad_2]
Source link
