Flick flapLOVE IT OR HATE IT, Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" challenges people to think hard about their country and their president -- and that makes it a must-see.
The film, which grossed a whopping $21.8 million its first weekend, is not popcorn-munching entertainment, nor factual documentary. It is Bush-bashing propaganda that offers fine training for sharpening one's critical eye and ear for the spin machines being generated by all candidates as the country moves toward a national election. Whether sputtering or cheering, the "Fahrenheit 9/11" viewer should try to tamp down the obviously manipulated emotion and ask: "OK, what is Moore trying to do here? And do the dots really connect?" Moore's attempt to link Saudi influence on President Bush with Osama bin Laden's escape is tenuous at best, and the suggestion that bin Laden family members got air passage out of the United States when all flights were grounded is not based on fact. The stringing together of sound-bites and photo clips that make Bush look goofy could be done just as easily to John Kerry, or any candidate. But Moore is devastatingly accurate in his depiction of the victims of war -- Iraqis weeping over relatives buried in rubble, a family terrified when soldiers invade their home, an American mother grieving the loss of her son, and wounded US soldiers screaming on stretchers. The film rightly questions the Bush administration's justification for war, the politicizing of the terrorist threat, and the strictures on individual liberty in the US Patriot Act. Moore is his sarcastic, outrageous self in this film, which was controversial even before it was in the can. People argued about why the Walt Disney Co. refused to allow subsidiary Miramax to release the movie. And there was static about whether Moore was hyping the controversy to generate publicity before the Cannes Film Festival, where he did win the Palme d'Or, the top prize. Now the debate boils about why the movie is rated "R" -- no one under 17 admitted unless accompanied by an adult -- instead of PG-13. Most teens could probably handle the images. Last week the conservative group Citizens United filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, insisting that the movie's television advertisements will violate campaign finance law if they continue to run after July 31. The law restricts corporations from buying time for campaign ads 30 days before a national political convention. The Republican National Convention is expected to nominate Bush on Sept. 1. The FEC should toss that complaint, and probably will, under the First Amendment media exemption written into the law.
At least 12 other political movies are out or in production. Such is the intellectual richness of a free society, which should welcome them all, no matter who is pilloried or praised. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
|
