Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11: A Review

Finally got to see Moore's latest, after at least a dozen attempts, and it was...as to be expected


Like "Bowling for Colombine", Michael Moore's "Farenheit 9/11" is a pastiche: of images, concepts, and reflections on the effects, and afteraffects of a pivital moment in America's history. Also like his earlier works, "Farenheit 9/11" is dead-on-the-money accurate on some concerns, and way off the mark on others.

Moore's portrait of G.W.Bush is that of an amoral, opportunistic, scion of a powerful family who has traded on his connections to achieve an existence both banal, and loathsome. A man utterly at odds with the American ideal of the citizen President imbodied by Truman, of the statesman President like Franklin, Lincoln, or Wilson, or even the principled President as seen in Roosevelt or Carter. Instead President GW Bush comes off as a weak, insincere, aged frat-boy who has syncophant remoras who have attached themselves to him in a mutually abasing relationship.

Moore's efforts to tie GW Bush to the Saudis' is not inaccurate in the main, but it "feels like it is", an attempt to smear the President by his, and his families, ties to the Saudi royal family. Bandar Bush is as much a "Bushie" as is a long line of honest, and dishonest persons from Kenneth Lay, to many principals of the Carylye Group. Variance is only a matter of degrees of separation, which the participants can comfortably ascribe to unexpressed personal preferences.

Whether it is Halliburton Corp, Harken Energy, the Texas National Guard, or Clarence Thomas and John Ashcroft, the remora feed off the brutish Bush who exists in a primoral world where power not truth, fairness, or compassion defines their lives.

Unfortunately in the film, Moore resorts to his, by now, trademarked ingrating interviews with the sufferers and those who have become secondary victims of the primary violence. It's a make-it-real attempt that is not convincing theatre. The viewer knows in advance the probably outcome of the relatives interviews. Grief, pain, anger, remorse, and a disquieting resignation to the facts on the ground filters through Moore's narrative. In Columbine, guns are readily available to anyone. In Farenheit 9/11 the fifty percent who agreed with Moore's take on GW Bush get all the red meat they could ever want.

In Farenheit 9/11, GW Bush is presented as a simple minded, ingratiating home-boy who would rather be down on the ranch chopping down trees than actively engaged in working to understand social, administrative and international problems and attempting to provide reasonable solutions to them. Bush is seen grinning, staring vacantly into space, mouthing politically tuned talking points, and mostly pretending to be engaged, with neither heart or head involved in the process.

Noone should consider Farenheit 9/11 as a chronological narrative, a journalistic expose, or as simply partisian propaganda, although it is partially all of these. It is instead an attempt to visually present a view of a man who noone should feel comfortable with. In that regard, it is an unmistakable success.