![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Fahrenheit 9/11
Jun. 27th, 2004 12:58 amNOTE: This review is not being cut for spoilers, because unless you've had your head in a hole for the past three years, there shouldn't be any.
Well.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
morgan1 and I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 this evening. The last time I had to stand in a line like that to see a movie was when Return of the Jedi opened. If the packedness of the house is any indicator, Disney's refusal to to distribute the film though Miramax may prove to be yet another nail in Eisner's coffin. I'm guessing it's already done better than Brother Bear.
On to the movie itself. The metanarrative that governs the film is one that will be familiar to most progressives, and to anyone who bears in mind Eisenhower's counsel against a "Military-Industrial Complex," to wit: War is the method by which the poor are sent off to die to line the pockets of the rich. It's not a terribly complex argument, but it is a reading that seems particularly applicable to the current geopolitical situation. And, although it is the films raison d'etre, near as one can tell, it is also the least important notion in the film. The important bits are in the details.
What Moore has done an excellent job of is pulling together a lot of the stories that appeared on page 10A over the past 3 years and synthesising them into a narrative of how we got from 9/11 to the Iraq war, and showing just how much the Bushes, the BinLadens, and the house of Saud stood to gain from it all. He does an excellent job "following the money," and while what he reveals is not anything that is news to anyone whose been watching the news closely since 2001, it will be a revelation to those who tend not to glance "below the fold," so to speak.
There are three major threads running in counterpoint: The first is a narrative portraying Bush as a lackadaisical President, more interested in recreation than the duties of office. The second is the narrative that connects the Saudis and the Bushes, showing the financial ties that bind and the degree of intimacy between them. This is an important thread for anyone who has ever wondered "hey, if 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, why did we attack Iraq?" The third thread deals with the Psy-Op perpetrated against the American people known as "The Terror Alert System" and how it has been used to encourage acceptance of the USA PATRIOT act and various other of our freedoms. Moore even goes so far as to show two instances of the PATRIOT act being used against American citizens. Moore, interviewing a Senator/Psychologist, does an excellent job of deconstructing the means by which the Bush administration has been creating a climate of fear.
The first half of the movie has lots of good stuff for all of us cognitive types, but not much for the affective types. In the second half of the film, which deals with Iraq, the tables are turned.
This is the part of the film where everyone who hates Moore will have their expectations met. It begins with a scene of Happy Iraqis living Happy Iraqi Lives to a voice-over of Bush announcing the start of the invasion. Happy Iraqi-Land then fades to black and we hear, then see, the first explosion. I suppose I would have regarded this segue as powerful if it had not seemed so inevitable. The scene that follows, with lots of civilian carnage is a stark contrast to Moore's portrayal of the 9/11 attacks themselves - shown only in the eyes those witnessing then and in its aftermath.
Organization is sorely lacking in this part of the film, as we jump from scenes of Iraqi civilian carnage, to American military carnage, to US recruitment methods in poor communities, to Moore himself playing what amount to puerile pranks on Senators and Secret Service men. Moore attempts to bind the story together using the tale of a mother from Flint, MI who lost a son in Iraq as a metanarrative for this half of the film, but I, for one, grew impatient with this woman's wallow in grief early on. It may be that Moore himself was having difficulty being patient with her. She was the only person in the film who Moore had philosophical differences with to whom he had to be polite. As he asks her questions about the pride she takes in her family's military service and in the flag, one gets the impression that he is swallowing a bitter pill, and he seems to treat her son's death as her comeuppance for holding those values.
When all is said and done, the second half of the film is heavy on emotional appeal and weak on analysis. While he shows us footage that we may not have otherwise seen of the horrors of war, I find I become fairly quickly inured to them, and found myself nearly falling asleep during these scenes of grief and horror. Horribly callous of me, I'm sure, but there it is. Maybe it would be easier to impress me with scenes of dead Iraqi children if Saddam Hussein had not been overtly funding the similarly gruesome deaths of Israeli children. Maybe the scenes of Ms. Lipscomb's grief would have been more compelling if she had not, herself, urged her son to enlist. But truthfully, Moore's portrayal of Saddam's Iraq as some Eden into which the Amercan serpent has brought death seems hopelessy naive, if not downright misleading.
This is, nonetheless, a film that is most definitely worth seeing. The first half of the film is absolutely essential to understanding the current geopolitical climate. The role played by corporations and the question of who stands to gain the most when those corporations gain is, I think, essential to uderstanding buth why 9/11 and the Iraq war happened. Most of that information can be found in Craig Unger's House of Bush, House of Saud, but Moore, interviewing Unger, picks up the salient points. The discussion of how the American People are being manipulated through a carefully constructed and maintained climate of fear is something has needed to be said since september 12th, and I praise Moore for having the courage to say it.
Well.
morgan1 and I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 this evening. The last time I had to stand in a line like that to see a movie was when Return of the Jedi opened. If the packedness of the house is any indicator, Disney's refusal to to distribute the film though Miramax may prove to be yet another nail in Eisner's coffin. I'm guessing it's already done better than Brother Bear.On to the movie itself. The metanarrative that governs the film is one that will be familiar to most progressives, and to anyone who bears in mind Eisenhower's counsel against a "Military-Industrial Complex," to wit: War is the method by which the poor are sent off to die to line the pockets of the rich. It's not a terribly complex argument, but it is a reading that seems particularly applicable to the current geopolitical situation. And, although it is the films raison d'etre, near as one can tell, it is also the least important notion in the film. The important bits are in the details.
What Moore has done an excellent job of is pulling together a lot of the stories that appeared on page 10A over the past 3 years and synthesising them into a narrative of how we got from 9/11 to the Iraq war, and showing just how much the Bushes, the BinLadens, and the house of Saud stood to gain from it all. He does an excellent job "following the money," and while what he reveals is not anything that is news to anyone whose been watching the news closely since 2001, it will be a revelation to those who tend not to glance "below the fold," so to speak.
There are three major threads running in counterpoint: The first is a narrative portraying Bush as a lackadaisical President, more interested in recreation than the duties of office. The second is the narrative that connects the Saudis and the Bushes, showing the financial ties that bind and the degree of intimacy between them. This is an important thread for anyone who has ever wondered "hey, if 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, why did we attack Iraq?" The third thread deals with the Psy-Op perpetrated against the American people known as "The Terror Alert System" and how it has been used to encourage acceptance of the USA PATRIOT act and various other of our freedoms. Moore even goes so far as to show two instances of the PATRIOT act being used against American citizens. Moore, interviewing a Senator/Psychologist, does an excellent job of deconstructing the means by which the Bush administration has been creating a climate of fear.
The first half of the movie has lots of good stuff for all of us cognitive types, but not much for the affective types. In the second half of the film, which deals with Iraq, the tables are turned.
This is the part of the film where everyone who hates Moore will have their expectations met. It begins with a scene of Happy Iraqis living Happy Iraqi Lives to a voice-over of Bush announcing the start of the invasion. Happy Iraqi-Land then fades to black and we hear, then see, the first explosion. I suppose I would have regarded this segue as powerful if it had not seemed so inevitable. The scene that follows, with lots of civilian carnage is a stark contrast to Moore's portrayal of the 9/11 attacks themselves - shown only in the eyes those witnessing then and in its aftermath.
Organization is sorely lacking in this part of the film, as we jump from scenes of Iraqi civilian carnage, to American military carnage, to US recruitment methods in poor communities, to Moore himself playing what amount to puerile pranks on Senators and Secret Service men. Moore attempts to bind the story together using the tale of a mother from Flint, MI who lost a son in Iraq as a metanarrative for this half of the film, but I, for one, grew impatient with this woman's wallow in grief early on. It may be that Moore himself was having difficulty being patient with her. She was the only person in the film who Moore had philosophical differences with to whom he had to be polite. As he asks her questions about the pride she takes in her family's military service and in the flag, one gets the impression that he is swallowing a bitter pill, and he seems to treat her son's death as her comeuppance for holding those values.
When all is said and done, the second half of the film is heavy on emotional appeal and weak on analysis. While he shows us footage that we may not have otherwise seen of the horrors of war, I find I become fairly quickly inured to them, and found myself nearly falling asleep during these scenes of grief and horror. Horribly callous of me, I'm sure, but there it is. Maybe it would be easier to impress me with scenes of dead Iraqi children if Saddam Hussein had not been overtly funding the similarly gruesome deaths of Israeli children. Maybe the scenes of Ms. Lipscomb's grief would have been more compelling if she had not, herself, urged her son to enlist. But truthfully, Moore's portrayal of Saddam's Iraq as some Eden into which the Amercan serpent has brought death seems hopelessy naive, if not downright misleading.
This is, nonetheless, a film that is most definitely worth seeing. The first half of the film is absolutely essential to understanding the current geopolitical climate. The role played by corporations and the question of who stands to gain the most when those corporations gain is, I think, essential to uderstanding buth why 9/11 and the Iraq war happened. Most of that information can be found in Craig Unger's House of Bush, House of Saud, but Moore, interviewing Unger, picks up the salient points. The discussion of how the American People are being manipulated through a carefully constructed and maintained climate of fear is something has needed to be said since september 12th, and I praise Moore for having the courage to say it.
