Well I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 this Saturday while my family stayed in Georgetown (as an aside, Georgetown University and Catholic University are absolutely amazing and Georgetown itself is astonishing). After being mobbed outside of the theater by DNC volunteers, we moved into the theater where we got the best seats to see Michael Moore's latest documentary and my reaction was...mixed.
The beginning of the movie starts with images of Al Gore and the 2000 Election. The first fact that Moore points to is the dubious projections of Florida votes. As we all remember, the networks (based on Voter News Survey projections) projected Florida as going for Gore. Then that changed and later in the night they all projected the state for Bush. Well, FOX was the first network to project Florida for Bush and of course that will make some irrational liberals question the validity of it. Moore than says that the person who was in charge of making FOX's projections was the first cousin of President Bush. Now the individual networks do not make their own projections as Moore insinuates. VNS does and the networks report that. So the whole Bush cousin thing is just stupid and wrong. Then of course the whole my brother is the governor of Florida thing and the chairman of my campaign is the secretary of state. Moore plays "guilty by association" here and it is not the first occassion.
Moore then ridicules Bush for well, going on vacation a little too often. This part made me chuckle and it does disturb me that Bush spend 42% of his time away from the White House that first year in office. Then 9/11 happens and the sounds and sights of that day are shown on the screen. I always have a tough time dealing with the events of that day and viewing the images again made me emotional. Then Moore shows 9/11 panel testimony from Richard Clarke and others that said that Bush did not do all that he could to stop 9/11 (he neglected the report's finding that Clinton may not have done all that he could have either). Then he goes into the most dubious part of the film: the Saudi-Bush connection and the insinuation that Bush allowed 9/11 to happen because of those connections and the financial dividends that the Bush family and Saudis would experience after 9/11. Moore plots two points on a map and then connects them with a line that makes the single bullet theory look straight. It is a shame that he chose to suggest that Bush actually wanted 9/11 to happen; he should have emphasized certain intelligence failures, administration failures, and Bush's seemingly lack of engagement on terrorism issues prior to 9/11.
After this, the movie moves into the Iraq war phase. This has to be the most powerful part of the movie. Moore chronicles the family of one Flint, Michigan soldier who died in a helicopter crash in Baghdad and the family's reaction. He meets with one soldier who has been in Iraq that says that he will never go back. He asks congressmen to sign up their children to go there, but they refuse to. He tells the untold story of Iraqi civilian deaths and shows the horrible graphic burning of Americans in their car. Of course, Moore does make it seem like Hussein's Iraq was peaceful where children fly kites all the time, but the rest seems pretty factually correct: there was no al Qaeda-Iraq connection, there have been no WMD found, there were miscalculations going into the war, and there is a terrific personal toll being taken on many military families. This part will make even the most committed of war supporters to question their stance especially with the images of Iraqi civilians dead and mourning families.
On the Raley scale of five stars, Fahrenheit gets 5 stars for purely cinematic reasons and 2 stars when it comes to political content and straightforwardness. I suggest that you all see it, whether you are liberal, conservative, or moderate. It is tought provoking and will make you consider your opinions more carefully. While it did not sway me away from support for the war, it may do that to others and it will make us consider why we do support the war. So hold your noise, fork over the $7 to see the movie and you will enjoy it.
Sure, it's wrong to steal bootleg movies, but in this case I'm willing to break the law to make my own personal political statement.
