Fahrenheit 9/11 English Movie

Feature Film | 2004
Critics:
Jul 14, 2004 By Subhash K. Jha


"Do some real work," George Bush shouts playfully at Michael Moore across an adulatory gauntlet of giggly supporters in the movie, "Fahrenheit 9/11".


Well, Moore seems to have paid closer attention to the president's words than suggested by his tongue-in-shriek attitude in this scathing documentation of the alleged misdemeanours of the Bush administration after the 9/11 tragedy.


Quite honestly "Farenheit 9/11" makes Bush look like a cross between a buffoon and a villain. While on the one hand we see him reading to kindergarten students while the twin towers were shot down (hence, buffoon) and, on the other, we also get the singular privilege of watching Bush fraternize financially with the kith and kin of Osama bin Laden (ergo villain)


But wait. Haven't we 'bin' here before? Didn't Bush repeatedly say he would like to "smoke out" bin Laden from his hideout? Hence the bombing of Afghanistan and Iraq?


Then why were bin Laden's Saudi Arabian relatives in the US allowed to leave the country within hours after the fall of the twin towers? What was the Bush administration thinking?


Hell, what was going on out there?! This is a question that seems to haunt Michael Moore's extraordinarily scathing, irreversibly damning deliciously sarcastic diatribe against the powers-that-be of what's ostensibly the most powerful democracy in the world.


But who's running the show in Uncle Sam's domain? Look for yourself. Michael Moore takes us through a mindboggling labyrinth of elaborate lies and deceptions. The layers of subterfuge that emerge from Bush's apparently patriotic determination to rid civilisation of the twin villains Saddam Husein and Osama bin Laden to avenge the twin towers, appears laughably self motivated when seen from Moore's viewpoint.


Cleverly Michael Moore looks at the Bush-fire from the average American's point of view. He takes the camera to the lowest angles to shoot American politicians at crotch-level treachery. From there it's down Capitol Hill all the way...


Below the belt? Yup. That's Michael Moore. He shamelessly sides with the common people to ask those uncomfortable questions from politicians which most of us like to sweep under the carpet... or Bush, as it happens to be.


Rising above the suicidal norm of self-hypnotic political ignorance, Moore delivers a bludgeoning blow to the believers of a mock-democracy that seems to have crept into all allegedly contemporary societies. While launching what is for all practical purposes a frontal attack on Bush and his regime, Moore also delivers a global warning: ignore


Besides some truly outstanding footage of Bush caught on the wrong foot(watch him purse his lips and narrow his eyes right after the 9/11 as Moore's ever-ironical voiceover comes on to say, "What's he thinking?... Is he thinking, I trusted the wrong guys?...). What really fuels this contemporary slice of life on a politics gone awry, Moore isn't afraid to get his feet into the muck.


There's a terrific interlude where we see army officials trying to round up young wastrels from small American towns to join the army. Right after that, the microphone in hand, Moore corners Congressmen to ask how many of them are willing to send their kids to Iraq.


At times like this, the grim offers the comfort of the grin. Moore is a born crowd-seducer. He knows how to win the audiences' complete faith, and he uses his scathing satire to full advantage unleashing what can only be called a flurry of extremely pungent episodes that show the whole politics of war to be targeted at keeping the poor, poor and keeping the rich, rich. And the twain shall never meet... except in the next Michael Moore documentary... Or the next Britney Spears concert.


Yup, she too appears in Moore's film to express confidence in the Bush administration. Does he look misguided? Moore isn't judging the onlookers. He just wants to damn the politicians.

Subhash K. Jha

   

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