'Fahrenheit 9/11'

MPAA rating: R for some violent and disturbing images and for language. Explicit footage of dead and badly wounded Iraqis, shots of charred bodies of Americans being beaten and suspended from a bridge.

Details and all that sort of thing:
Lions Gate Films and IFC Films and the Fellowship Adventure Group present a Dog Eat Dog production, released by Lions Gate Films.
Director - Michael Moore.
Producers - Michael Moore, Jim Czarnecki, Kathleen Glynn.
Executive producers - Harvey Weinstein, Bob Weinstein, Agnes Mentre.
Screenplay - Michael Moore.
Cinematographer - Mike Desjarlais.
Editors - Kurt Engfehr, Christopher Seward, T. Woody Richman.
Music - Jeff Gibbs.
Running time: 2 hours, 4 minutes.

He didn't call it "J'Accuse!" but he might as well have.

Like Emile Zola, whose celebrated 19th century open letter assailed the French government for being a party to intolerable injustice, Michael Moore in "Fahrenheit 9/11" has launched an unapologetic attack, both savage and savvy, on an administration he feels has betrayed the best of America and done extensive damage in the world.

Unabashedly partisan, wearing its determination to bring about political change on its sleeve, "Fahrenheit" can be nitpicked and second-guessed, but it can't be ignored.

... Both in form and effect, "Fahrenheit" goes a step beyond Moore's Oscar-winning "Bowling for Columbine." He's never made a documentary that so literally embodies the clich? of being ripped from today's headlines, that arrives in theaters precisely as the issues he's concerned with are getting maximum attention within the context of a heated presidential campaign. In fact, neither has anybody else. "Fahrenheit 9/11's" determination to rewrite the rules of what Americans go to see in theaters has more kinship with Mel Gibson's equally convention-shattering "The Passion of the Christ" -- but the audience it seeks to galvanize is at the other end of the political spectrum.

Now, seething with a controlled fury, Moore is angrier than ever; like Peter Finch's anchorman in "Network," he's fed up and not about to take it anymore. As outraged about Sept. 11 as any neo-con, he's livid about what's been done in its name. And he gives no one, least of all President Bush, the slightest benefit of the doubt.

This film isn't about the Bush family relationship to Saudi Arabia, the excesses of the Patriot Act or the pitfalls of the invasion of Iraq, though it touches on those topics. Instead we get a full-blown alternate history of the last three-plus years. Moore makes a persuasive and unrelenting case that there is another way to look at things beyond the version we've been given.

Perhaps the most disturbing of all is footage showing the president on the morning of Sept. 11, continuing with a photo op involving a Florida elementary school class reading "My Pet Goat" for nearly seven minutes after having been told that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center.

It's an unflattering picture of irresolution and even paralysis, one that informs Moore's thesis -- of a president in over his head -- and pervades the entire film.

Appropriating some conservatives' tendency to go for the jugular, Moore is not above making people look silly. We see extensive use of "the feed," embarrassing moments culled from TV outtakes -- images like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz grotesquely licking his comb to help his hair stay in place.

The Wolfowitz clip, one you won't be able to forget even if you want to, is a clear example of Moore at his most vulnerable and most effective. It leaves him open to charges that he's being unfair, that he's mocking human frailty. But he's willing to take the risk to make his point.

Moore refuses to pass up an opportunity to show us how ridiculous, how awkward, how vain are the people who've successfully sold themselves as all-knowing Great White Fathers who have the gravitas to be trusted absolutely. It's a daring ploy, and, silly though it may seem, it shows us how willing Moore is to use any tool he can to get his job done. Wake up, America, he's saying, these are the people you've trusted your children's lives to.

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 911 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.

... in spite of the film's loaded bias against the work of the mind, you can grasp even while watching it that Michael Moore has just said, in so many words, the one thing that no reflective or informed person can possibly believe: that Saddam Hussein was no problem. No problem at all. Now look again at the facts I have cited above. If these things had been allowed to happen under any other administration, you can be sure that Moore and others would now glibly be accusing the president of ignoring, or of having ignored, some fairly unmistakable "warnings."

Some people soothingly say that one should relax about all this. It's only a movie. No biggie. It's no worse than the tomfoolery of Oliver Stone. It's kick-ass entertainment. It might even help get out "the youth vote." Yeah, well, I have myself written and presented about a dozen low-budget made-for-TV documentaries, on subjects as various as Mother Teresa and Bill Clinton and the Cyprus crisis, and I also helped produce a slightly more polished one on Henry Kissinger that was shown in movie theaters. So, I know, thanks, before you tell me, that a documentary must have a "POV" or point of view, and that it must also impose a narrative line. But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem, and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft. If you flatter and fawn upon your potential audience, I might add, you are patronizing them and insulting them.

... If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture.

The first peculiar thing about Moore's libel-mongering is that most American journalists disdain libel suits as a matter of principle. Even when they have good cause for a suit, most journalists refrain from filing, believing that libel threats keep topics of controversy from being aired. They'd rather contest hostile attacks on their work in the marketplace of ideas, not courtrooms. Why Moore, the former editor of the Michigan Voice and a regular purveyor of controversial journalism, has chosen to break with this tradition is anybody's guess.

... if Moore wants to sue anyone who maligns his film, he certainly has a legal right to do so. But will he get very far?

Not likely.

Defamation (written libel) occurs when somebody publishes as fact something that is false, is "unprivileged," and harms somebody's reputation by making him the object of hatred or ridicule, causes him to be shunned, or injures him financially or professionally. So unless Moore's critics call him a liar, a felon, a murderer, a chiseler, a Nazi, a child molester, tax evader or any other false statement that is objectively provable, they'll likely not receive a court summons from his lawyers. ...

Likewise, no court would be inclined to find in Moore's favor if a critic accused him of lying once or twice or 12 times in Fahrenheit 9/11, or accused him of bending facts to his convenience, or damned him for being disingenuous. This sort of subjective expression of opinion is protected under the law, and there's nothing the blustering Moore can do to stop his critics from making them. Given the thousands of wildly hostile film, book, and restaurant reviews published each year, court dockets would be overflowing with libel suits if bringing one was as easy as Moore pretends to think it is.

I think Moore's open threat to engage lawyers to combat libel has been misunderstood. Moore isn't gearing up to defend the film against charges of libel; he's letting everybody know he's willing and ready to defend himself and the film from libel.

Seemingly forgotten are all those pieces over the last couple of years by maddened and insane right-wing commentators - the ones calling for the 'bombing of Canada,' the ones calling for 'killing liberals.' They were dangerously irresponsible even if their words weren't actionable.

Moore has given them a fair warning - his lawyers are ready to defend the film against attacks from loose-mouthed pinheaded crazies.

I don't think Moore's intent was to prohibit somebody like Hitchens from boring everybody to death.

... A conservative advocacy group says Michael Moore's Bush-bashing movie Fahrenheit 911 violates federal election law, and on Wednesday, the group is taking its complaint straight to the doorstep of the Federal Election Commission.

David N. Bossie, president of Citizens United, said he will hold a press conference at 10:30 a.m. today to release details of the complaint and explain which laws were broken.

... Citizens United's general counsel also will attend Wednesday's press conference to discuss details of the allegations -- and Citizens United said "documents will be hand-delivered to several government agencies immediately following the media briefing."

Citizens United describes itself as an organization dedicated to restoring the federal government to citizens' control through a combination of education, advocacy, and grass roots organization.

The group "seeks to reassert the traditional American values of limited government, freedom of enterprise, strong families, and national sovereignty and security," its website says.

In recent weeks, Citizens United has run an "anti-Clinton" advertisement "exposing the real legacy President Bill Clinton left for America." The ad was timed to coincide with the release of Clinton's new book.

Citizens United also has run an ad challenging the support of the firefighters' union for Democrat John F. Kerry: "Many of our local heroes, firefighters and first responders are proud of Pres Bush's leadership in the war on terror and stand behind him in the fight to seek justice for those who murdered over 3,000 innocent Americans on 9/11," the Citizens United website says.

Citizens United also offered an online petition calling on Sens. John Kerry and Ted Kennedy to "stop politicizing the actions of a few rogue military personnel" at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. "Stop slamming and demoralizing our troops, and stop using these awful events as a means to fortify the Kerry campaign warchest," the petition said.