I’m really glad I didn’t review this movie when I first saw it. I knew then that I wasn’t in the position to say what I wanted to say about it, and as time went on, and opinions emerged, I came to think less and less of my initially powerful emotional response. Seeing the movie as slightly hypocritical (using the same fear-mongering techniques Moore claims to be speaking out against), and so one-sided, I started to think I’d really hate it on a second viewing.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. This movie is exactly the “bad” things above, but it’s undeniably full of passion. After watching it today, I couldn’t get it out of my head at all for hours. Finally I came up with a good way to describe what I think is its real significance: it’s like someone made Schindler’s List in 1948. Fahrenheit 9/11 speaks volumes about how f**cked up the world is, that’s for damn sure: but the fact that someone can make a movie like this about events like this only 3 years after speaks even more for at least one of the ways our world has improved.

The other thing I noticed on this viewing was something I was clearly trying not to notice before, such is my love for Roger Avary and Bret Easton Ellis: Avary is (hopefully) going to be directing the movie version of Bret Easton Ellis’ novel “Glamorama,” one of my favourite novels ever that speaks similarly of how crazy our world has become. Written years before 9/11, it nevertheless bears eerie comparisons to the blur between fact and fiction that date now, for me at least, stands as a symbol of. I’m still convinced that Glamorama the movie will be one of the greatest movies of all time; only now, I have to admit, it has a big rival in Fahrenheit 9/11, because, in a way, with this movie, it’s already been done.

And that brings me to why I will probably forever consider this both one of my all-time personal favourites and among the greatest movies ever made: if we survive this period in time as a race, then the events this movies concern are going to go down as some serious moments in history, and there’s simply never going to be a greater presentation; and personally speaking, and I’m sure a few people will be with me on this, when those planes crashed and those towers collapsed, even though I wasn’t exactly familiar with the towers themselves let alone American politics, it shook my world forever, made me realise that every day after was a gift, that we could have all died that day or in the days that followed, and this movie completely encapsulates and gives me a place to release that momentous feeling. I mean, I feel dumb saying stuff like this because I’m not American and stuff, but the fact is, I do believe that America leads the way. I’m a movie buff, that says it all. The thing is, right now, it’s unfortunate that America leads the way, and that’s a bummer. I’m gonna have to come back to this review when the election results come in ‘cos I don’t know where to go after this sentence and this thing definitely needs closure.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 20th, 2004 at 3:42 am in Movie Reviews, unrated and tagged as documentary, political, top 250. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.