Documentary Pick – Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
This year marks an anniversary for a seminal work by documentarian Michael Moore. No, I’m not talking about the one you’re thinking of, I mean the one that he made 15 years later and was much, much, much more controversial. Much. Roger & Me brought Moore a lot of praise for his acerbic and thorough takedown of General Motors CEO Roger Smith. But in 2004, when Moore took out his knives for the administration of George W. Bush and their handling of foreign policy post-September 11, he went from populist to pariah faster than you can say “Taliban.”
What’s interesting in looking back at Fahrenheit 9/11 10 years later – and I don’t think I’ve watched it since 2004 – is just how uncontroversial it is. At the time, Moore was just a couple of rungs above Osama bin Laden on the ladder of America’s most hated for having the temerity to question the motivations of Bush and his advisers to wage war on a country that had nothing to with 9/11. But 10 years on, and with the ISIL threat pushing the U.S. and allies back on a war footing in Iraq, the veil that Moore was some kind of fink out to ruin America’s good name with Fahrenheit doesn’t have the weight it once did.
From a filmmaking standpoint, Fahrenheit 9/11 represented a different type of Michael Moore movie. Although Moore had won on Oscar for Bowling For Columbine, there was still something scattershot about that movie, as if the director were throwing stuff at the wall to see what would stick. By comparison, Fahrenheit was more focused, more pointed. Moore was also conspicuous by his absence, and although his narration is omnipresent, the man himself doesn’t appear on screen till the 40 minute mark, and his total screen time is probably less than 10 minutes. The typical Moore gags and pop culture references are there, as are the streeters and interviews with various instigators and experts, but Moore manages to stay on target through it all.
Fahrenheit 9/11 captures a difficult moment in American history for all the various complicated issues it represents. Caught between the bombastic patriotism of the early Iraq War and the moment Cindy Sheehan blew the protest movement open just one year later, Moore’s work here was, polemic. As Iraq is now back dominating the headlines, it’s also now a useful reminder of how we got this far.