Manufacturing Dissent
I guess this is one of those movies most thinking people will be able to attempt a review of without even needing to watch. I think I personally decided halfway through Fahrenheit 9/11 – or at least some time after, ‘cos a lot of the criticisms were valid enough to force even the most ardent of his fans into a re-assessment of the whole thing – that basically, yes, we know, Michael Moore sometimes lies as much as the people he makes documentaries about. Yes, he stoops to their very same tactics like fear at times. But you know what? Who the hell cares? When the people he makes documentaries about usually are undeniably deserving of it? How exactly are you to argue with the Bush machine, the Charlton Hestons of this world, etc? And, by the way, isn’t it ironic that even the film makers here can’t resist doing the exact same thing at times (the fake business cards, for example)?
Really, all this movie tells us is what we already know – or at least, should know – that media literacy is among the most important and tragically overlooked things on the planet right now; and that maybe we should be careful about calling Michael Moore films, and it must be said other films like them, “documentaries”. It won’t change anyone’s opinion on his work, or on the people he “documents”.
It earns points for being frequently as well-made as even some of Moore’s work – and more still for at least trying to be more balanced than Moore … so balanced, in fact, that in the end they ultimately fail completely to make the guy look as bad as they clearly want him to, lol. By letting Moore and his colleagues speak for him so often, and by showing themselves so often in a particularly poor light (perhaps highlighted by the hug one of them has with the man, really shoddily explained by the narration), this really came over for me like the biggest failure to denounce a person that I’ve ever seen. Which, considering I like the guy, and I like even more the things he fights for, I guess was a nice surprise, however embarrassing for the film makers.