Michael Moore draws on old tips in Fahrenheit 11/9, mixed effect

In the beginning Fahrenheit 11/9, documentary Michael Moore prepare a story of origin. It is – who else? Donald Trump.

Trump, tells the story, still hosted NBC L & # 39; s apprentice when he learned in 2014 this former leader of No Doubt Gwen Stefani was paid more to be a vocal coach on The voice that he was in his show. Trump was angry about it. He wanted to prove that he, like Stefani, was popular – that he too could attract a crowd.

Therefore, according to Moore, the announcement of the Trump Tower campaign in 2015 – you know, the famous speech in which he asserted that Mexican immigrants "have a lot of problems, and they pose these problems with [them]. They bring drugs. They carry the crime. They are rapists. And some, I suppose, are good people.

Trump, Moore insists, did not want to be president; The announcement of the campaign was a diabolical hoax intended solely to attract attention. It only became dangerous when Trump, seeing the crowd, realized that he could continue to attract attention when he was maintaining the charade. "He was trying to place NBC against another network," said Moore The Hollywood Reporter recently. "But it just went wrong."

Moore is far from being the first to suggest that Trump's race was based on his ego, rather than a real interest in politics. But an occasional spectator, Googling the phrase "Donald Trump + Gwen Stefani" after seeing the film, will only be brought back to the Fahrenheit 11/9 press tour. It is a story of origin whose origin is not the story, but rather the man who tells it.

No surprise there: this is Michael Moore we are talking about. This is shameless propaganda – which means that the end of the Fahrenheit 11/9 is not the truth in its purest sense, but rather the truth of Moore's anger. The takeaway is not, like Moore in his movie, that the Trump era should be rewarded by the queen of ska. It is that the Trump era is as arbitrary as it is dangerous, a simple, bitter fight that has somehow been catapulted into a presidency with devastating geopolitical consequences. The point is, do you call this democracy?

What is another way of saying that Fahrenheit 11/9 did what Moore did best or at least throughout his career. It is a sprawling waste, scathing and full of heart of a polemic, in equal parts, passionately passionate and unforgivable. This is a series of grievances from a man who has never used his substantial platform to get rid of his chest.

You could summarize the film in the same terms that Moore could use to summarize our current political moment, or even politics at large: treason. Fahrenheit 11/9 discusses the treason of survivors of school shots by adult lawmakers who, after years of excessive violence, refuse to comment on the overly lenient gun laws of the United States; Flint residents by the Michigan government and its partner in crime, the auto industry; of the workers' bloc by the democrats of the establishment; of primary voters in West Virginia who in each county voted to nominate Bernie Sanders, but were thwarted by a late twinkling at Hillary Clinton; teachers by state governments (and in some cases their union leaders); Hillary voters by the Hillary campaign; of the American public by a media landscape too much in love with the circus to see how badly the country was doing; and finally the story – of all of us, who should have seen this happen.

11/9 abounds in these defeats and, in some cases, excessive simplifications – all this pulls in the usual directions, carried by Moore's trademark "told you that". The complacency of the pundits is under fire. The establishment's democrats – with their fetish of political compromise – also do it. We get a summary of the election night of 2016 and the shock that ensues, the burning tours of the Clinton and Obama presidencies, and an incredible recurrence (not in a good way) of years of democratic mistakes in History of the working class and the minority. voters to his conservative love of big money, and brief encounters with rising local political stars like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib.

Much of this territory is quite mined. It's unfortunate that Moore uses it almost entirely for its ironic value, for its ability to scold our surprise, rather than open new avenues of discourse or incite to more decisive feelings. The overall effect is too close to the Irony Twitter – traps that say more about the filmmaker's ability to say "Gotcha!" Than to himself. There's a part in which Moore reviews Trump's trump story of Trump's fuckups, including, of course, the "catch them by the pussy" tape, and a strangely scary montage of Trump's sexually suggestive relationship with her daughter. In these images, Moore hears, "Does that make you uncomfortable? I do not know why. None of this is new. He has always committed his crimes in plain sight. . . But is that all you have?

I had the same irritating reaction as Moore's brief glimpse of his astonishingly entangled story and Trump's story, which began when Trump and Moore were both invited to appear on Roseanne Barr Short talk show – an occasion where Trump, knowing Moore's policy, threatened to walk unless Moore promises to play nicely. So they stayed in orbit for a while. It's more or less all that Moore gets out of the anecdote (beyond wondering where we were when Roseanne had a talk show). And not only Trump: Jared Kushner once the opening night of Moore's doc Sicko-which Steve Bannon distributed company on home video.

Moore seems to write these links with a shrug of shoulders "Whaddayaknow? he does not search for questions or ideas, or turns around to ask himself what role he played in the state of things. Instead, he prefers to tell a story that runs, farther and farther, with incendiary historical connections and a lot of social anxiety tied but distinct.

The film does not fly as much as promised, just as the system is broken, as well as Moore's ability to self-publish. What motivates everything here is pure feeling. This can be effective. The most compelling section of the film is, unsurprisingly, the treatment of Michigan's Flint water crisis, from Michigan, and the repeated failures of the C.E.O.-friendly governor. Rick Snyder do something about it. Moore's coverage of this event – ranging from an overview of legionnaires' disease that plagued the community to a sit-in with a whistleblower who had been asked to participate in a concealment operation. Health service, lying to the state, and parents of sick children about their lead level – is heartbreaking.

Fahrenheit 11/9 consolidates the rage so well that even if it is only occasionally effective, I hesitate to scratch the film. I remember what it was like to have total trust in Michael Moore. I remember what it was like to feel that he was giving voice to our anger; That was certainly the case for me, a sixth grade student when the Columbine massacre happened. Suddenly, the school was no longer safe. And when I looked for answers, it was Bowling for Columbine-No my parents or my teachers, not TV news, not newspapers – which seemed to understand this fear, turning it into a new political consciousness.

As Columbine– like a lot of Moore's work –11/9 raises more questions about the logic and intentions of its manufacturer than it can be ignored. But like these films, the feeling of mistrust on the part of the population encrusted powerfully. Look at these residents of Flint: devastated by their state government and, moreover, symbolically and for lack of politics, by their first black president. With friends like these, the movie rightly seems to ask who needs a government?

Full screenpictures:30 presidents who did better in the popular vote than Donald Trump

Andrew Jackson, 1828 and 1832

Ironically, Jackson, who was arguably the most triumphant of past Presidents, won the most popular votes in the 1824 election, before losing the presidency of John Quincy Adams after the vote was taken to the House of Representatives. . But in the elections of 1828 and 1832, he won the popular vote with respectively 56% and 55%.

Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Martin Van Buren, 1836

Van Buren, the eighth president of the United States, earned a margin of about 14 percentage points from his opponent William Henry Harrison in the popular vote of 1836. (Unfortunately, Harrison would leave in four years.)

Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

William Henry Harrison, 1840

After losing to Van Buren in the 1836 election, Harrison won the popular vote in the 1840 presidential race by six percentage points.

Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

James K. Polk, 1844

Like Donald Trump, Polk was considered a "black horse" candidate. But unlike Trump, Polk won the popular vote. (Of course, by a margin of less than 2 percentage points, but he always won.)

Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Bill Clinton, 1992 and 1996

Both Clinton won the popular vote. In 1992, Bill removed George H. W. Bush by more than 5 percentage points, and in 1996, he beat Bob Dole by more than 8 percentage points.

Photo: AFP / Getty Images.

Barack Obama, 2008 and 2012

After winning nearly 53% and more than 51% of the votes cast in 2008 and 2012 respectively, Obama really knows what it feels like when more than half of the country actually wants to see you at the White House.

Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Donald Trump, 2016

Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly 2.9 million votes.

Photo: by Kip Carroll / Rex / Shutterstock.

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