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As the opening salvos sound their way into the darkened theatre, filled to capacity (droves literally lined up around the block on opening day) we are greeted with that witty humour that defines the films of that smilingly sarcastic ironic patriot Michael Moore, most hated man, this side of ole Sadaam, in the west wing. But this is a wit that after about the first fifteen minutes is only seen again during the film's 1 hour and 56 minute running time a scant few times. These momentary witty lapses are, unfortunately, the minority in an otherwise boring film. Luckily though, when Moore hits, he hits hard, like the harrowing scenes of dead and wounded civilians in a bombed-out Baghdad.
Not nearly as entertaining as Bowling for Columbine or Roger & Me, but not nearly as sensationalistic either. As opposed to Columbine, here Moore makes the conscious effort to not show any of the footage of the World Trade Center going down, instead deciding to go with a much more harrowing darkness. We've seen enough of those moments. We now have more important fish to fry. But it is both his lack of entertainment and his lack of sensationalism that make this film differ from his past films, and this is probably due to the fact that Moore himself, a usually top-billed star in his documentaries, is barely on screen, except for a few performance pieces. One involves Moore driving around D.C. in an ice cream truck while P.A.-ing the mostly unread Patriot Act to any congressman that can hear him.
Many critics laud the fact that Moore has taken a back seat to the story, but it is his grandstanding that gets people's attention, and although this is extremely serious subject matter we are dealing with here, it is Moore the great entertainer that will get people to listen and taken notice, so long as he doesn't rant like a lunatic as he did during his 2002 Oscar acceptance speech. It is during these moments of milk-crating that Moore shines his brightest. It is also during these attacks on the Bush Boys that the film sells itself. When Moore is aiming his angry fist toward Bush and his Cowboy Cabinet, we see Moore at his strongest, but once he dallies from that perspective and starts going on endlessly about what Saudi owns what company, we fall flat. Not that the connections between Bin Laden and both Papa Bush & Baby Bush are trifle (far from it), but it is here that the film drones on too long.
The one other thing that Moore does well is his use of "found" footage and creating them into a wonderfully biting montage of satiric rhetoric. Some critics have even taken to calling him the new Eisenstein because of this, but Moore is far from a great filmmaker. A great muckraker, yes. A great patriotic performance artist, yes. A great filmmaker, sorry, no. I can only assume that the reason for the film's Palme d'or victory at Cannes was more of a wave at its political message of getting rid of an incompetent president than at its cinematic qualities. So many right-winged demons have tried to spin Moore out as un-American or even as a traitor and then they turn around and do the most un-American thing imaginable: censoring public information by trying to ban this film. So, even though I don't think it deserved it artistically, hurrah to Tarantino and the rest of the Cannes jury for having the guts to applaud this film when no one else was allowed to.
In the end though, there is not one shred of information laid out in this film that was not already known to me, or that should have been known to any well-informed American citizen, who instead of chugging spoonfuls of mass media conglomorates, can take their eyes of the ticker for a moment or two and read publications such as The Nation or The Village Voice or The New York Times or just about any European newspaper (there is a reason Americans are hated around the world, and it's not for our God-blessed freedom, but rather for our imperialistic Godzilladizing of the world). But, when all is said and done, if Moore's new film sways even one voter away from re-electing an already un-elected presidential fill-in named George Dubya Bush, then this movie, for all its flaws, was well worth the wait and all the legal battles for distribution. [07/26/04]
Vote John F. Kerry in November 2004!
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