Reporters wanted to know why he made the film. “Aren’t you preaching to the choir?” one asked, noting the decidedly Democratic leanings of the crowd. (One of the film’s distributors joked at the screening that the only Republicans in the audience would be undercover agents from the Republican National Committee.) Moore recalled the question as he took the stage to welcome the audience. “First of all, it’s good to give the choir something to sing,” he said.
Moore’s film is a cinematic tour de force. It is bitingly funny, and connects the dots in a way most media hasn’t dared in terms of who profits from the Iraq war, and who fights it. Moore follows two Marine recruiters assigned to the poorest areas of Flint, Mich., his hometown, where unemployment is above 10 percent –and closer to 50 percent if you count people who have been out of work for more than a year.
The recruiters stalk their prey, size up the possibilities in candid language (they describe one possibility as too “gangsta”) and pursue promising candidates in the parking lot of a shopping mall. Moore notes elsewhere in the film that only one member of Congress has a son on active duty in Iraq. In a hilarious sequence, Moore goes to Capitol Hill to ask lawmakers to consider sending their own children off to fight in Iraq. He gets no takers.
The burden is carried by people like the mother from Flint whose son died in a downed Black Hawk helicopter in Iraq. She loves her country. She explains how she never lets the American flag touch the ground when she carries it outside for display each morning. In her son’s last letter home, he talks about everyone in his platoon wondering why they were still in Iraq. In it, he says he wishes they could vote “that fool” out of office. If Bush is a president of war, she told the crowd at the end of the movie, “I’m a mother of war.”
Also joining Moore on stage at the premiere was an Army corporal, who appears in the movie declaring he would rather go to jail than return to Iraq if ordered. Speaking out as he did while in uniform places him in legal jeopardy. “I put myself through hell to wear that uniform,” he said. “I am prepared to die and kill for my country. I already killed for my country, and next time it better be for the right reasons.”
Moore captures the voices of soldiers in the field, how hard rock music and lyrics, “Fire Water Burn,” blasts in their headphones as they move in for a strike. One fresh-faced young man says, “It’s a lot more violent than videogames; it’s a lot more gruesome than you think.” Another speaks of seeing “little girls with their noses blown off, husbands carrying dead wives. You’re saying, ‘Shoot, what do we do now?’”
My sentiments exactly as we see pictures of the Iraqi dead, and the anguish of the Iraqi people. Most media shielded us from these images. Moore may be preaching to the choir, but he says, “The choir was asleep–demoralized, despairing … Cynicism and despair are the great friends of the rich and powerful. The more Americans they can get to check out of the system, [saying] they’re not going to vote [because politicians are] all crooks–that’s music to the ears of those in charge. This film is a different tune.”
Moore is a propagandist in the best sense of the word. He wants to defeat President Bush, and he has marshaled facts and footage to make the case. It is unnerving to watch Bush sit stony-faced for almost a full seven minutes reading “My Pet Goat” after an aide whispers in his ear that a second plane has struck the World Trade Center and that America is under attack. Bush told the 9/11 commission he wanted to project calm; he projects paralysis.
“Fahrenheit 9/11” opens at almost 900 theaters this weekend, which is nine times more screens than Moore had for his last documentary, “Bowling for Columbine.” Attempts by GOP stalwarts to intimidate theater owners into refusing the film have only generated more demand at the box office. “Fahrenheit 9/11” broke all opening-day records in New York, out distancing “Mission Impossible” and “Men in Black.” Noting that President Clinton’s memoir, “My Life,” is also setting record sales, a pleased Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic Party chairman, said, “It must be driving them nuts,” them meaning the Republicans.
The strenuous efforts of right-wing activists to curtail the showing of the movie suggest they understand the potential impact of this film. Because “Fahrenheit 9/11” is a cultural phenomenon, it just might attract the young and the politically unaffiliated, voters with the power to defeat Bush.
