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I got your back Lady. Here's what she had to say about the film.
"Fahrenheit 9-11 was good last night. Not outstanding but good. It does seem a bit odd that it's being released worldwide as it's deliberately targetted at an American audience, telling them what Fox doesn't, reminding them of the news that has got forgotten and supplanted by good facts.
I doubt I'll ever get to see Michael Moore Hates America over here, which is a shame. The problem is that that film is dishonest, conflating America in the title with it's people which we are promised are in the film. There is no evidence that Michael Moore hates or even mildly dislikes the people of America, it's the corporations and the Government, especially the Republicans but also the gutless timidity of the Democrats (John Kerry notable in his complete absence from the picture), they are who Moore is against. It's annoying to see all the people who complain about Moore's dishonesty then lying themselves.
The thing that shines through this film is Moore's rooting for the common people. He may be one of the super-rich now, but he hasn't forgotten his roots, and parts of the film return to his home town of Flint Michigan, as an example of the people he calls 'the backbone of America', the families that have lost children. We meet a super-patriot mother, who hangs the flag outside her house each day and never lets it touch the ground, who is Conservative and has had most of her family serve in the Armed Forces. In one of Moore's more blatant scenes he has her read the last letter she received from her son before he was killed in Iraq, surrounded by her family. When she breaks down in tears at the end he zooms in on her face and holds it for a long time. It felt uncomfortable to watch, but Moore has two hours to make his pitch while Shrubya gets his message out twenty-four hours a day every day through the mass media, so perhaps Moore lacks the time for subtlety. The second half of the film has a lot of film from Iraq, casting the US troops as both Occupying oppressor ("I don't understand why they don't like us!" one soldier bitterly complains) and victims of attacks due to being sent there by Bush.
The best scene is the film's opening one. With the screen totally black we here the panic and chaos of the morning of September 11th 2001. We here the planes approach, the thunderous explosion as each of them hit the World Trade Centre, the gasps and screams of the bystanders. Then the pictures come up and we see the people standing, watching, running, screaming, praying, crying. And the sound is dialled away and we are forced to watch this mute. We've all seen similar pictures to this on our televisions hundreds of times since they happened, but from the start my TV gave me distance so it looked no more real than a video game or a new movie. Moore makes it seem fresh and new and brings back the horror. Michael Moore hates America? Hardly, he's as shocked, appalled and saddened as everyone else. But it doesn't stop him asking questions.
He doesn't believe that Bush planned September 11th. In interviews with House Democrats he clearly leads the viewer to the opinion that such measures as the Patriot Act were in a big Republican file marked 'What we'd like to do if we could work out some way of getting away with it'. September 11th was the gateway through which the Republican party saw it's chance. And he points out how the Government continually worries it's people with warnings that a terrorist attack could be imminent, it could be in their home town tomorrow! Fear stops the proles from complaining. Yet Moore lists a frightening list of cuts that Bush has made to the pensions of the soldiers, their disability benefits, the resources to treat them when they're injured. Budget cuts mean that Oregon has one part-time policeman to watch it's coasts, who cheerfully admits that he wouldn't know what to do if he came across terrorist activity. Moore clearly believes that the War Against Terror at home is a figment of the political imagination.
Anyone that's read Dude, Where's My Country will find the first third of the film familiar, when Moore talks about the close relationship between the Bush family and the Saudis, including the extended Bin Laden family. The problem is that Moore goes some way, then stops short. We have the case of the Bin Laden family being flown out of the country when no-one else could fly. We have close friend of Bush from his days in the National Guard (and is it only reasons of time that stop Moore from bringing up the question of whether Bush really did it?) who are now the bankers for Saudi businesses, who pumped money into Bush's companies that somehow managed not to find oil in Texas. We have ex-President George Senior, who left the White House and went into a cushty job that happened to be involved in setting up an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea that would run through Afghanistan. As in the book, Moore builds up a web of strong ties between Bush and foreign oil. But Moore doesn't conclude this. Does he want to say the Saudis are directly behind Al Qaeda? That they actively support it and that Osama isn't quite the black sheep rogue that the Saudi ambassador to Washington makes out? Chris Hitchen's attack on Moore is as unfair as he claims Fahrenheit 9/11 is, but he does make the point that Moore's various points don't coheer into a definite charge.
There are two countries in the Middle East that Bush has close ties to. And Moore tends to concentrate less on the other one and never really deals with them together because it affects his insinuation of dark dealings in the Saudi government towards America. If Bush is as close to the Saudis and would do anything for them, why does he take such a blatantly antagonistic line towards them in his support of Israel? The Islamic antipathy towards Israel is not counterfeit and the invasion of Iraq was as much about doing them a favour than anything, Bush's recent vocal support for Ariel Sharon would not go down well with the Saudi government, yet Moore doesn't touch this with a bargepole. Israel isn't even mentioned once.
Moore bombards his viewers with facts, sometimes at dizzying speed. Most of it seemed familiar, almost all of it is stuff we'd read in news reports and seen in the news but forgotten. There was only one time that I caught Moore out as deliberately playing with the truth. He talks about 'the Coalition of the Willing' that would invade Iraq, then mentions the three smallest countries who didn't have any troops to contribute. He doesn't mention Spain or the UK, just makes it seem that the Coalition comprises of countries that it's difficult to find in an atlas. Tony Blair is only seen twice, but one of those is in a gallery of shots when Moore is complaining about Bush taking too many holidays as President. I'm not entirely sure whether Blair travelled to America to meet Bush pre- Sept. 11th, but I'm sure that if he did it wasn't to sit around a campfire roasting marshmellows and singing songs.
This is not a perfect film, nor is really a film about Afghanistan, Iraq or Saudi Arabia but about what those countries mean to the United States. As such it should be seen by every citizen of that nation. What is needed is a similar movement to that for The Passion of the Christ, Sadomasochist, group bookings to get people in to see it for free, left-wing groups giving out leaflets as people leave. This is not a party political broadcast supporting the Democrats, but it's definitely attacking George W. Bush's fitness to be President." |
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