edelstein on f9/11

David Edelstein at Slate is fast becoming one of those critics who writes the touchstone piece for me on movies. His review of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind said what I wanted to about the movie's relationship to the great screwballs better than I could. His Fahrenheit 9/11 review is one of the more interesting I've seen and worth taking a look at.

Moore is best when he doesn't stage dumb pranks (like broadcasting the Patriot Act in D.C. out of an ice-cream truck) but provokes with his mere presence. When he interviews the author of House of Bush, House of Saud in front of the Saudi embassy and the Secret Service shows up to ask what he's doing, it's a gotcha moment: What's the Secret Service doing protecting non-U.S. government officials? He has a light touch there that's missing from the rest of the Fahrenheit 9/11. In one scene, his camera homes in on a Flint, Mich., woman weeping over a son killed in Iraq, and the effect is vampirish. After the screening, a friend railed that Moore was exploiting a mother's grief. When I suggested that the scene made moral sense in the context of the director's universe, that the exploitation is justified if it saves the lives of other mothers' sons, my friend said, "When did you become a relativist?"

I'm troubled by that charge—and by the fact that we nearly came to blows by the end of the conversation. But when it comes to politics in a time of war, I think that relativism is, well, relative. Fahrenheit 9/11 must be viewed in the context of the Iraq occupation and the torrent of misleading claims that got us there. It must be viewed in the context of Rush Limbaugh repeating the charge that Hillary Clinton had Vince Foster murdered in Fort Marcy Park, or laughing off the exposure of Valerie Plame when, had this been a Democratic administration, he'd be calling every day for the traitor's head. It must be viewed in the context of Ann Coulter calling for the execution of people who disagree with her. It must be viewed in the context of another new documentary, the superb The Hunting of the President, that documents—irrefutably—the lengths to which the right went to destroy Bill Clinton. Moore might be a demagogue, but never—not even during Watergate—has a U.S. administration left itself so open to this kind of savaging.

Along with many other polite liberals, I cringed last year when Moore launched into his charmless, pugilistic acceptance speech at the Academy Awards. Oh, how vulgar, I thought—couldn't he at least have been funny? A year later, I think I might have been too hard on the fat prick. Six months before her death in 1965, the great novelist Dawn Powell wrestled in her diary with the unseemliness of political speech during an "artistic" event: "Lewis Mumford gave jolt to the occasion and I realized I had gotten as chicken as the rest of America because what he said—we had no more right in Vietnam than Russia had in Cuba—was true but I did not think he should use his position to declaim this. Later I saw the only way to accomplish anything is by 'abusing' your power." Exactly. Fahrenheit 9/11 is not a documentary for the ages, it is an act of counterpropaganda that has a boorish, bullying force. It is, all in all, a legitimate abuse of power.

Apology for the extensive quoting. You really should still go read the whole thing. (Don't you just have to love a critic who quotes Dawn Powell?)

Also, despite all the quibbling about what documentaries are (which is an interesting question that's being hit on sideways all over the place), this article contains the best statement I've seen by Moore about how he views the movie.

Moore made no apologies for his partisanship. "Documentaries by their very nature are supposed to have a point of view," he said during the conference call. He calls his documentary "an op-ed piece -- it presents my opinion based on fact." He said he believes the movie is playing strongly in Middle America, and that it has confounded theories that "it would only speak to the choir."

"The documentary filmgoing audience is not that large. . . . I would imagine tens of thousands of people came this weekend who had never been to a documentary in a movie theater in their lives," says Moore.

I can't say I disagree with him, but Edelstein and others seem to. I have to think more about it before I'm sure. I will say this: knowing the artist/creator's intentions create an interesting framework to view the movie in. And viewed through Moore's definition, I'd say his movie's an unquestionable and rousing success.

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