14.07.2004

Powerful but flawed

Steve Cooke reviews Michael Moore's film 'Fahrenheit 9/11' and finds him wanting in one crucial aspect: Moore criticises Bush very well, but has got no programme for a political alternative

Michael Moore’s new film, Fahrenheit 9/11, reached UK cinemas at the weekend and is reported to have broken box office records for a feature documentary.

There was some doubt that the movie would be released at all this year after Disney-owned production company Miramax refused to distribute such a politically controversial work during the run-up to the US presidential election. However, Moore found an alternative distributor less concerned with upsetting Republican foibles.
So what is all the fuss about? As its title suggests, Fahrenheit 9/11 focuses on the Bush administration’s response to the al Qa’eda terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in September 2001.

The narrative begins in November 2000 with the disputed outcome of the Florida state ballot in the presidential election. “It wasn’t a dream; this is what really happened,” says Moore, as he portrays a systematic effort to rig the result in a state run by George W’s brother, governor Geb. Black voters with criminal records were systematically disenfranchised by state election laws designed to minimise the Democrats’ potential support. A Republican-biased Supreme Court ratified the result in Bush’s favour in spite of evidence showing that the process had been corrupted.

A particularly poignant section, and one I had not seen before because the British media lost interest in the affair after the Supreme Court ruling, was the footage of Senate proceedings chaired by unsuccessful presidential candidate Al Gore, who accepted the court’s verdict for the sake of maintaining the existing order. A stream of representatives from the Afro-American community were shown attempting to lodge objections to the election result, but they were all ruled out of order by Gore because the support of at least one senator was required for a petition to be considered. None of the 100 senators were prepared to rock the boat, although a number of House of Representatives congressmen did sign up to the complainants’ cause.

Moore then ridicules Bush’s first eight months in office, recalling that 42% of his time was spent on vacation and alleging that security briefings about the threat to US security posed by Osama bin Laden’s organisation were ignored.

The World Trade Center attack is not shown directly, the screen going black and the audience left to hear the terrifying sounds from the crumbling buildings before moving to images of passers-by looking upwards in horror. This was a very effective way of conveying the shock of the day’s events.
Bush’s reaction to the al Qa’eda outrage is the subject of both mockery and conspiracy theorising. News of the attack reaches the president while he is participating in a primary school class during a routine photo opportunity. He is shown reading a children’s book, not knowing quite what to do next for a whole seven minutes, before it is decided that the matter warrants more serious attention and he leaves with his Whitehouse aides.

Moore features the disputed claim that over the next few days 24 members of the bin Laden family were granted special dispensation from a flight ban and allowed to leave the country, even though the security experts interviewed by Moore assert that they ought to have been detained for questioning.

No coincidence, suggests Moore. He unveils transcripts of Bush’s military service record blacked out by the US administration that show George’s best buddy in the army and subsequent life-long friend was one James R Bath - chief money manager for the fabulously wealthy bin Laden family. The film claims that Bush’s chequered, pre-political business career was at all times closely linked to bin Laden finance, with the Saudi elite estimated to have invested $1.4 billion in companies connected to the Bush family.

We are left to draw the inference that the US administration had every interest in ensuring that these connections with the man who directed 9/11 were not examined too closely. Fair enough, you might say, but why would the administration conspire to help the bin Laden clan leave the country and escape questioning? Surely that would only draw attention to the relationship once the story came out - unless, of course, you want to take the conspiracy theory even further and imply that September 11 was all a US establishment plot.

The movie then turns its attention to the US government’s exploitation of the public panic over terrorism to introduce sweeping new powers under the Patriot Act. Every opportunity was taken to heighten the climate of fear and to persuade the public that Iraq was closely associated with al Qa’eda’s actions. Bush family and political connections were again rewarded in the choice of companies that secured lucrative contracts to service the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, the film points out.

In a moving part of the film, Moore interviews a family bereaved by the loss of their soldier son killed in the Gulf conflict and follows their attempts to make sense of the tragedy that has befallen them. He then does one of his trademark stunts asking US congressmen to agree to have their own children sent to Iraq to support the administration’s efforts on behalf of the free world.
This is a documentary, so I do not think I am spoiling the ending by reporting that the movie closes with Moore reflecting on the desperate poverty suffered by many US citizens while their government wastes billions of dollars fighting a war supposedly to find weapons of mass destruction that never existed.

Overall, Fahrenheit 9/11 is a powerful piece of cinema. However, it reflects Moore’s obsession with corporate misgovernance without ever really challenging the basis of the capitalist system that makes such practices inevitable. On the one hand, Moore uses cheap gags and out-takes to make Bush look stupid, whilst on the other he attempts to persuade us that the man is part of some secret conspiracy - something that actually devalues his core message.