Director: Michael Moore
Cast: Michael Moore, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Kellyanne Conway
Have I Seen it Before: No. For some reason I’ve been avoiding Moore’s movies for the last sixteen years or so. It was almost like I didn’t want to jinx anything…
Did I Like It: I don’t disagree with Michael Moore, but I can’t help but think that the key feature of one of his documentaries is their inability to change their targets, or the people effected by them. Roger Smith might quickly not have been the chairmen of GM anymore, but George W. Bush won his second term, Capitalism doesn’t show any signs of going away, and the if the NRA is in trouble, it has very little to do with anything that happened in Bowling for Columbine (2002). If we all tried real hard, maybe we could ignore the man from Flint’s treatment of our odious 45thPresident, and maybe they both would go away?
The film is ultimately unfocused. While the opening act zeroes in on Trump with Moore’s usual tools, things take a turn for a long stretch to be about poisoned water in Flint, Michigan. Admittedly, that is a huge issue, and if there is a documentary to be made on the topic Moore would be uniquely qualified and positioned to make it, I’m just a little surprised that it is nothing more than a digression in a large movie. Then, the movie switches to a prolonged discussion of the teachers strikes. Then goes back to Flint and complaints about Obama’s response. It then touches on the rise of Trump again, before swinging back to a quick hit on the immediate post-9/11 America, which is kind of like having to sit through the stuff from the new album before Billy Joel finally gets around to “We Didn’t Start The Fire.” All, fair, but where is Trump in most of the film? Had Bush been this absent from Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), then, hell… Maybe John Kerry would have won? Maybe a soft Moore movie is just what America needs.
Maybe that’s why it didn’t take America’s collective imagination by storm that lack of focus. After COVID, these issues are still important, but it’s not the thing that wakes us up in the morning. Nearly twenty years later, Fahrenheit 9/11 seems quaint. It took all of two years for this one to feel like it is a museum piece.
Moore may not be the guy to meet this moment. As damning as he is of the right, he’s also always been dimly suspicious of the Democratic Party as well. As soon as things are concluded (?) with Flint, Moore turns his attention to the entrenched interests of that party. The failings of the party are, again, a completely valid issue. It probably had more bite and value ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. However, in the age of Trump, and as I write this, we are less than two weeks away from our best opportunity to get him out of the White House. We’re on fire now and trying to dismantle the Democratic Party is like arguing about how the paintjob might be ruined by the house. Let’s put out the fire first, then we can try to make the Democratic party—and Democracy itself—better. A pox on both of the houses is exactly how the other guy is winning.
Maybe I just outgrew that 20-year-old kid who decided to go see Fahrenheit 9/11 after Spider-Man 2 (2004). Sometime around the point where Moore tries to indicate Americans should set themselves on fire, I’m almost sure I should have outgrown him a long time ago.