When I watched Fahrenheit 9/11, I found myself thinking of The Atomic Cafe.
The two films are similar; they’re both polemics, both basically assemblies of existing clips, with a viewpoint and an attitude. Their goal: to generate and implant opinions by way of carefully edited existing news clips and film footage.
Yes, I know, much of *F9/11 * was filmed specifically for the movie (the ice cream truck sequence and Moore’s attempt to enlist congressional offspring, for example), but most of it was old film footage, edited in such a way as to create an editorial viewpoint. Of the two, *Atomic Cafe * does this way better; AC is so good, in fact, it eschews any narration or added footage; it’s nothing BUT carefully edited news and archival film footage… but it manages to create the impression that the creation and use of nuclear weapons has been rather badly mishandled by the military and our leaders, in the past, as well as the fact that a lot of people did NOT understand much about radiation and its hazards, back in the day. Still don’t, really.
Comparing *F9/11 * to his previous film, Bowling For Columbine, though, I’m thinkin’ Moore’s motivating closer to the *Atomic Cafe * model, though. I’m not sure if this was intentional, or if he just had so much great Bush footage that he couldn’t stand not to use it.
…and therein lies the rub.
First of all, I’m not sure that F9/11 is going to be all THAT influential. From what I understand, your hardcore Bushies and archconservatives are refusing to see it at all, and it’s certainly not going to influence the Anti-Bushies; their minds were made up already. This leaves the swing voters, and how many of them, exactly, are going to go and see it? And of them, how many are going to get irritated by the fact that it is, in fact, a rather one-sided portrayal of the facts?
If it is to have any effect at all, it must be in the fact that people are paying to go and see a political polemic on the big screen. It’s a big Anti-Bush Campaign Commercial, and people are going to go and pay seven to nine bucks a pop to watch the freakin’ thing.
I’m quite sure the conservatives absolutely adore this idea, and are, no doubt, trying to figure out how to make the basic concept work for THEM. Any future Democratic President who gets caught diddling with any reasonably attractive woman is going to have some major headaches in this department; you don’t need Michael Moore to turn this into a sexy, titillating, entertaining (and politically devastating) hunk of polemical entertainment.
It says something for Moore that he was able to make entertainment out of the Bush family’s close ties to Saudi business interests and the tentacular grip Halliburton seems to have on the government and on the Iraq war. Most people have trouble staying awake through the six o’clock news for this stuff, but Moore’s got them paying for it AND sitting through two hours of it!
The question remains, though, whether or not the conservatives will find someone sufficiently dedicated and talented enough to make it work. Moore’s got talent, and more importantly, he’s a true believer in what he’s saying.
Are there none in the Republican camp who remain non-cynical enough to be able to pull something like this off?
