Fahrenheit 9/11 gives a more accurate portrait of how the Bush administration operates than an average segment from CNN, Faux News, or MSNBC.
In talking with people from other countries I’ve found that they enjoyed Fahrenheit 9/11 quite a bit and viewed it as entirely accurate. I’ve been told that anti-war activists in Poland used the movie heavily as part of their campaign to get Polish troops withdrawn from Iraq, a campaign that was eventually successful.
For the law firm where I used to work, I had to do a lot of factual research into the current administration’s ties to various oil companies and nations. In other words, my goal wasn’t to find information to apply to particular stance, but to find information period. I HOPE my views did not color the slant of my research, and I feel it was presented in a fair manner. Anyway, it saddened me to find out that many of the facts in the film were true; however, I thought that the film would have been more powerful had Moore had a less biased slant, and had he checked through ALL his facts, not just most. Plus, the “creative” editing wasn’t helpful for the film’s credibility, either.
So in answer to your question (I hope this is the type you were looking for): After many hours of research, I’m certain many parts of the film are true, but not all, and I wish both sides could look at it more objectively than using a knee jerk reaction that the film causes (in other words instead of screaming “That’s not true - the whole thing is WRONG! PROPOGANDA!” or “It’s all true - the Bush administration is anti-free speech, anti-poor people, anti everything that’s good for the people” I wish people would think through their reaction a little more).
There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking. - Theodore Rubin
'Nuff said.
F 9/11 had more verifiable facts in it than Bush’s runup to invading Iraq, and just as much non-fact based spin.
So because there were lots of verifiable facts, I would call it a documentary.
(But man, lots of innuendo fluff that was unproveable one way or the other that weakened the overall message. And no hilarious cartoon like the “Scare white people” in Bowling for C.)
At least give Moore credit for being upfront with the goal of his movie; nobody walked into Fahrenheit 9/11 expecting a dispassionate analysis of the pros and cons of the Bush Administration, for instance.
I’m with rjung and MissGypsy – it’s manipulative and misleading, but the basic facts on which Moore builds his arguments are true. If you watched the film and only looked at numbers, names, and dates, you wouldn’t come away with any false information.
Exactly what she said.
Exactly.
Moore implies connections that he leaves unstated, and it’s up to you to decide what to do with that. But was Bush ultra-cozy with the Saudis? Yep. Did Bush sit in that classroom for several minutes after having been notified of the second plane crashing into the second WTC tower? Yep. And so forth.
I hate to belabor the obvious comparison, but Moore’s at least as honest as the President he’s critiquing. And according to many critics (including some here on this board), the Dems need to distance themselves from people like Moore. Funny that nobody’s expecting the GOP to distance itself from Bush.
I see it rather as a polemic than a documentary, but that’s an issue for the genre taxologists.
Whatever it is, the film contains factual content, though the context and presentation are delibarately manipulated to drive a point home. So sure, it’s factual, as MM didn’t spin the content from whole cloth; but it’s quite a tapestry he pieced together! Some might call it a crazy quilt.
Bleh. Taxonomists.
Propoganda.
Like all good propoganda, it starts with a collection of verifiable facts, and then adds out-of-context clips, opinion, one-sided reporting, and other types of spin to make sure it accurately reflects the producer’s bias. Facts that would tend to refute Moore’s conclusions are omitted.
Sounds to me like a Bush speech on Iraq, Social Security, or just about anything for that matter.
I think the problem is that when a person hears about a documentary, they think about lemmings. When they think about a documentary that has a particular point of view, you think aboutDisney employees throwing helpless furry animals off cliffs, you do not think about a political point of view. My opinion is that Bush’s allies have demonized Moore to the point were his statement that the sky is blue is disputed. Also, they feel free to put forth whatever claims they would like against him. Just look at the above quote. InvisibleWombat does not seem to think that someone should be allowed to put forth his own opinion in a movie that he made, unless an opposing view is shown.
If that’s what InvisibleWombat meant, he certainly didn’t state it. I believe InvisibleWombat’s point was that any decent documentary should at least address the opposing viewpoint, which would be a sentiment I echo.
Moore’s films don’t even entertain this prospect.
So, by this argument, Hoop Dreams is a lousy documentary because it doesn’t give any attention to the thousands of aspiring pro-basketball-wannabes who don’t make it. Uh, right.
The reason Fahrenheit 9/11 doesn’t present an opposing viewpoint is because the Bush Administration (and the lackluster excuse of an “independent” media we have today) already did it for him.
Well excuse me for not considering every single documentary possibility.
Let me amend my hasty statement as such, to reflect what I actually meant: I believe that most political documentaries who wish to be taken credibly should address the opposition.
Don’t take this personally dude, we’re discussing movies.
I think it is reasonable to taakes this personally since, IRL, the personal is political, and the film discusses both. Anyway, I gotta go. See yah tommorow.
Well, just for kicks, instead of guessing what InvisibleWombat thinks, let’s ask him!
You should be allowed to put forth any opinion you please in a movie that you make, with no requirement whatsoever to show an opposing viewpoint. I never stated or implied otherwise. However, such a film is not a documentary. It’s propoganda. Heck, in this case, it’s a hit piece.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with propoganda. As RTFirefly pointed out, Bush isn’t likely to give Moore’s viewpoints during one of his speeches.
A documentary, on the other hand, should present all sides of an issue. And it should do it honestly, without twisting evidence through out-of-context clips and clever editing, like Moore did in that famous Clint Eastwood scene in Bowling for Columbine, where he spliced together parts of speeches from up to a year later and made it sound like a response to the Mayor of Denver. That’s when I realized that Michael Moore was being just plain dishonest.
And an adventure movie should be exciting. Not all of them are.
FWIW, “documentary” is, among other things, an Oscar category. It is in that sense that F911 is unequivocally and unassailably a documentary. It’s a movie category. And we’re talking about a movie here.
It belongs in that category, far more than it belongs in any other category that the Academy (or IMDB, for that matter) has yet come up with. And that’s why it’s a documentary.
But that’s NOT synonymous with the dictionary definition of ‘documentary’, nor is it synonymous with your own, should it differ.
Sorry, but I don’t see that as unequivocal or unassailable. Even Moore himself says that the purpose of the film was to prevent Bush from getting elected. Once the movie starts playing fast and loose with the facts, it ceases to be a documentary.