Fahrenheit 9/11

Reviews > Film > Jul 2004

By James KeastOn the surface, director Michael Moore's new documentary explores the familial connections between current President George W. Bush and some powerfully rich Saudi oil barons, including many family members of renowned terrorist Osama Bin Laden. But his real intent is to depose the sitting President in the upcoming November election, and as such, it's the first mainstream artistic work ever dedicated to such an aim. To get my own bias out of the way: I hope it works. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a powerful polemic that convincingly displays Bush's complicity in some seriously flawed thinking regarding Bin Laden, the terror attacks on New York City, and the ways in which the Bush administration has manipulated American fear into an unrelated invasion of Iraq. Moore uses every manipulative tool at his disposal to accomplish this, like soundtracking discussion of Bush's Texas roots with stereotypically backwater banjo music. He even emphasises Bush's 2000 "election" with a rendition of the theme song to early '80s TV show The Greatest American Hero: "Look at what's happened to me / I can't believe it myself / Suddenly I'm up on top of the world / It should've been somebody else." This kind of political action-comedy has always been in Moore's arsenal - here he drives around Washington in an ice cream truck reading the Patriot Act, which Congress didn't do before it was passed - but Moore's film takes a more serious turn in its second half. In fact, Bush's actions before or after the 9/11 attacks are not the real target: his unjust war in Iraq is. Moore interviews survivors of those terror attacks, but also many active American soldiers in an attempt to humanise the (mostly impoverished) people who are giving their lives for a war that Bush Jr. wants to win for his dad. That conclusion gives Fahrenheit 9/11 an emotional heft that hits hard. Here's hoping that not only will this film get similar attention to Moore's hit Bowling For Columbine, but that American viewers will take their anger all the way to the polls. (Alliance Atlantis)

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