Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)

Film: Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
Stars: Michael Moore
Director: Michael Moore
Oscar History: The film wasn't submitted for the Best Documentary Feature (considering its box office, it almost certainly would've won the category) as Moore wanted to compete for Best Picture, which he wasn't cited for (though one wonders in the expanded field if he might have made that happen).  It did win the Palme d'Or though.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

I don't entirely know how it's possible I didn't watch Fahrenheit 9/11 in college.  I definitely saw Bowling for Columbine during that time on DVD, and this was a movie that I would have discussed with peers at the time.  It's probably because I was living at home when it came out during the summer, but it's weird that I didn't also catch this on DVD, as it certainly would have been a discussion point as I was an ardent volunteer for the Kerry campaign that fall.  Whatever the reason, I finally caught this movie for the first time a few days ago, and it's jaw-dropping.  I don't watch a lot of one-sided documentaries nor politically-focused ones, because they usually slant enough that they border on falsehood.  Even if you know something not to be true, when you see someone say it amidst a bunch of other facts, it gets caught in your brain as "well, maybe I'm wrong and they're right."  This is also why I never watch cable news opinion shows, even with people I agree with, because I want to keep my opinions grounded in fact.  But I'm trying to see all of the Palme winners, and this one popped up in my Netflix queue, so I figured I'd give it a shot, and while Moore's occasional use of bias to make a point comes through still 16 years after the fact, it's the crystal ball he put up to America and the Republican Party that is truly shocking.

(There are no Spoiler Alerts in Real Life) The film focuses on the biggest headlines from the first term of George W. Bush's presidency.  The big stories that Moore focuses on are the 2000 election, the 9/11 attacks, the Iraq War & the reasons for going into war, and the Bush family's connections to the Saudi Arabian royal family.  The film's back-half continually hearkens back to Lila Lipscomb, its most emotionally-effective sequence.  Lipscomb is a Michigan woman who spent most of her life being against pacifist protesters, thinking they were attacking her family (she had a long military family history), and then changes her opinion when her son dies in Iraq.  We see her stand outside the White House, fighting with another woman who is accusing anti-war protesters of being staged and "not real."  The film ends with Moore, sympathetic to the soldiers, pointing out that only one member of Congress has a child fighting (they never mention who it is, but for the curious it was then-Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota), and noting that wars are consistently fought by lower-income families who are not afforded the same financial opportunities afforded to those politicians who send them to war.

This film was made in the run-up to the 2004 election, so in many ways it was meant as a deterrent for Democrats to not take lightly a second term of Bush's presidency.  This message was not, of course, realized.  Despite Moore's film becoming the highest-grossing documentary of all-time, George W. Bush won that election, and it had dire consequences for liberals (Hurricane Katrina, the housing crisis, and the Supreme Court tenures of John Roberts & Samuel Alito happened during that time frame, for context).  It's heartbreaking as a Democrat to watch Moore lay out the case for denying Bush a second term in such a cinematic way, and yet know that not only would he not be heard, but we'd elect a second Bush just sixteen years after the first in the form of Donald Trump.  Indeed, the shots of incompetence, corruption, and moral bankruptcy displayed by some of the politicians in the film feels like it could be plucked from our current administration verbatim.

Moore's film isn't flawless, even if it's very easy to digest (even 16 years after the fact, when a number of the headliner names are distant memories).  There are scenes that a serious journalist (one who came in with an open mind) certainly wouldn't have allowed.  There appear to be half-truths during the sequence about the Saudi flights, allowing Osama bin Laden's relatives to leave the United States without being questioned (this is not correct-many of them were questioned before they left the United States), and Moore's confrontations with members of Congress were also edited.  Putting aside that Johnson was the only member of the Senate who had a child serving in Iraq at the time (both Reps. Duncan Hunter & Joe Wilson had children fighting abroad), the confrontations were edited to make the members of Congress, particularly Mark Kennedy, look worse than they actually were (Kennedy is shown simply confused by Moore, but has stated later that he did chat with him for a while, and that his nephew served in Afghanistan).

This is because Michael Moore is not a journalist, he's a filmmaker, and filmmaker's have perspectives.  It's hard for me to sort of intermingle my feelings about Moore's politics (which I tend to share) with his attitude toward journalism (which I do not share) and then to add in his filmmaking skills, which are at their best here.  I'm giving this four stars because I think it's an important, well-made film, but one that relies too heavily on pushing a narrative when there is enough evidence there to let the narrative come together on its own.