FAHRENHEIT 9/11
You won't be surprised to hear that I disagree with Michael Moore's
thesis in Fahrenheit 9/11 (Bush is to blame for everything). But, just
for a change, I'd like to write about the film as a film, rather than
as a political tract. Because it's not just any old film, it won the
Palme d'Or at Cannes, which is a rare honour indeed, and they wouldn't
have done it just for the Bush-ba****ng, would they?
Dissenting from the jury's verdict, Jean-Luc Godard said, "Moore
doesn't distinguish between text and image. He doesn't know what he's
doing." I'd say he does know what he's doing, if only because it's so
obvious. For example, early in the picture, Moore shows a montage of
Bush bigwigs – Cheney, Rummy, Condi – getting made up before TV
appearances. The message here seems to be that the Bush Administration
is a bunch of phonies wearing carefully constructed artificial
identities. But don't Democrats wear make-up on TV? Al Gore certainly
did, to frightening effect in the first 2000 debate. Moore's clipfest
seems crude and pointless, unless you're simply giving the crowd an
op****tunity to sneer at the physical features of Administration
officials.
After he's got (yawn) the Florida recount out of his system, we get to
the meat of the film, beginning with a sequence covering September
11th itself. Moore used the planes hitting the towers for a cheap
punchline in Bowling For Columbine. So this time he doesn't show us
anything: The screen is black, we hear only sounds, screams, thuds,
chaos, and then the darkness clears to show us the aftermath. Critics
were very appreciative. "Moore exercises admirable forbearance," wrote
Ann Hornaday in The Wa****ngton Post, "and creates one of the most
moving sequences in recent cinema."
But, when a director who's not exactly known for admirable forbearance
suddenly starts exercising it, you can't help wondering why. Later in
the movie, the old forbearance goes out the window – ****d corpses of
dead Iraqi children, shattered bodies, etc. The grief of a bereaved
mother from Flint, Michigan is dwelt on at exploitative length and
Moore is in no hurry to exercise his recently acquired forbearance: if
it feels good, milk it. Much of Fahrenheit is comprised of unused TV
footage: the make-up montage is from the minute or two before the
interview begins, when the camera's rolling and they're adjusting the
lighting, etc. Well, there's plenty of unused footage from 9/11 – the
TV cameras zoomed in on bodies falling from the towers, ordinary
Americans choosing to die by taking one last gulp of air and plunging
to earth rather than burn up in the heat and hell inside.
The networks took a decision not to show that – it was too real, too
intrusive. But how strange that Michael Moore lingers on the brutal
horror of Iraq, yet when it comes to 9/11 he exercises his now famous
forbearance and blacks it out, a model of restraint. The
prettification, the artsification, the moviefication of the effect is
cleverly calculated – because he knows that if he showed us, say, the
couple holding hands as they plummeted to their deaths he'd risk
audiences reacting as viscerally as they do to the dead Iraqi kids.
What Miss Hornaday calls "one of the most moving sequences in recent
cinemas" is, in fact, an act of evasion.
That brings us to the other striking aspect of this Moore film: the
lack of Moore. In previous outings – Roger And Me, Bowling For
Columbine – Moore is the central screen presence. He's there for every
interview, the stunts are built around him, he's in shot continually.
That doesn't happen here. He hangs out at the Saudi Embassy and
pesters Congressmen, but when a typical Moore stunt eventually shows
up – the great man driving an ice-cream van round Wa****ngton reading
the Patriot Act over the speakers – it sticks out precisely because
it's at odds with the rest of the movie. You wonder why Moore is now
showing "admirable forbearance" about his use of himself.
Then we get to Iraq, and the film starts using some awkward,
unintentionally revealing footage of US troops, shot by a crew who
weren't exactly upfront about how it would be used. And the penny
drops: Moore had to ease up on his own presence in the rest of the
movie, because otherwise you'd notice his absence from the Iraq
section. He apparently had the resources to get original footage shot
there, but not to go there and shoot it himself.
Unlike Moore, I'm reluctant to bandy accusations of cowardice, as he
does to America's Congressmen. But, golly, I went to Iraq and I'm a
notorious "chickenhawk", so how dangerous can it be? Given the film's
Dubya And Me-style poster showing Bush and Moore holding hands, we
surely have a right to see the hitherto dogged doorstepper – or at
least a body double (if such exists) - there on the ground in Baghdad
or Kirkuk to lend his signature to these scenes. Instead, without his
presence, they seem stylistically disconnected from the wearily
inevitable routines of him wandering around his hometown of Flint
wringing yet more juice from its chronic post-industrial blight. If
the mangy old pooch refuses to learn any new tricks, he could at least
apply them in a wider range of geographic locations. Next time, how
about Osama And Me?
MARK STEYN -- The Spectator, July 10th 2004
|
