One would think that it would be pretty obligatory to have a piece fawning over celebrated teddy-bear-like filmmaker and author Michael Moore in a student publication like this one. Since it’s written by and for students, reason dictates that it would automatically be utterly pinko, or maybe that’s just what Robert Fulford would have us believe. Well, I hate to make you all sit back and slap yourselves on the back, but here it is.
A warning to that two per cent of us lefties who hasn’t yet seen Moore’s really quite fantastic film, Fahrenheit 9/11: do not do a lot of drugs, especially not a lot of stimulants, the night before theatre-going. For those who don’t know (I simply conveniently forgot): drugs that speed you up and make you invincible always result in an equal emotional plunge after they wear off. It’s a law with Newtonian absoluteness.
That means seeing the film in a state like that will make you cry. Seeing Iraqi civilians torn to shreds by bombs wielded by teenagers? Cry. Watching an ultra-dramatic replay of the WTC tragedy? Cry. Witnessing the criminally negligent profiteering of Bush Junior and his extended family of Scary White Southern Men? Cry again. I might have blubbered in a public theatre last Friday, I admit it. Um, okay, I cried four times, actually. I blubbed into my cheesy Mexicasa nachos while the nice elderly couple down the next row glanced over worriedly.
Assuming you are not in a similarly debilitated state of mind, go to the nearest multiplex now and see it. Bring your mom, your great-aunt, her nephew. Don’t worry about the overpriced tickets, since the wide screen is necessary. The news networks wouldn’t show mutilated American soldiers or the confused, childish face of their President on our living room TVs, so the fact that it’s so huge when we finally get access to it is somehow justified.
Think of the money as your little contribution to the death of the supremacy of the blockbuster. Nobody knows what to do, because no documentary has ever won a box-office weekend before (and in the summer!).
That’s because Moore’s film differs from most documentaries, in that it offers a narrative dramatic and sweeping enough to beat any cookiecutter Hollywood thriller. The events since Bush was elected (which is where the film begins) have lacked any real coherence for Americans or for the rest of the world. The current administration, along with the U.S. media, has tried and failed to satisfy us with their version of events. Moore has given us coherence, and we’ve loved him for it.
If your anger is coming to a boil by the end, there’s no need to go Unabomber on any nearby embassies-at the very end of the film, we are flashed the message: “Do Something: www.michaelmoore.com.” Ahh, thank you, Mike. You’ve made media revolt look easy. You’re my hero.
