Documentaries fall pretty low on my list of preferred film genres, in fact it falls about rock bottom right underneath horror movies. Having to sit through a documentary is like torture, and to make matters worse, having to sit through a political documentary…just the thought made me cringe. Fahrenheit 9/11 was different than I expected though; made explicitly to show Michael Moore’s opinion of the president, the war and the media, its structure made it entertaining and lively. Moore’s film documented the controversy around the presidency of George Bush and the actions taken by him, painting Bush as the lucky fool who secured his victory through a series of family ties in high places.
Michael Moore reached deep into the controversy of the War on Terror and the connections between the Bush family and the Bin Laden family. He mentions the three decade long relationship between the two families (the amount of money invested between each other), and the evacuation of Bin Laden family after the attacks without any interrogation. Moore even mentions Bush’s efforts to halt any investigation of 9/11 by Congress and private investigations, and when Bush was unsuccessful in stopping Congress, he instead censored 28 pages regarding Saudi Arabia in their reports, claiming that revealing where they gathered this information from “[is] what the enemy wants, and we are fighting an enemy.”
Michael Moore criticizes politics in the media, using Fox news as a prime example, when Fox news calls Florida as a win for Bush, every other station thinks “well if Fox news said it, then it must be true.” Another criticism of how media and politics influence each other is during the scene where Bush and several other important political figures are getting their hair and makeup done before they appear on camera. This obsession with image and “looking good” for the public shows just how much effort they put into face value rather than their purpose. When watching an older man lick his hand an run it on his hair in an attempt to fix it, I could only wonder, “is he putting that much (and hopefully more) effort on his job? It also made me wonder what does the public think of politicians, if they weren’t as clean and neat as they look on camera, would we still listen to everything they?
Without outright saying it, he uses media footage that the public has already seen (like the My Pet Goat reading done by Bush) and music to state his opinion and also to break the tension. His usage of sound really did make a statement in the film, like when the scene cuts to Bush going on vacation, the music was lively and carefree, much like our former president was. Another use of sound that really leaves an effect on the viewer is the sounds of the attack on the World Trade Center. Rather than showing the actual footage of the planes hitting the Towers, he only played the sounds on a black screen, to better emphasize the seriousness of the situation, without showing such disturbing images that could potentially upset viewers.
Watching this documentary I found myself questioning Moore’s views, because while he was using real footage, his picking and pulling of certain pieces offered no room for opposing opinion. Every image of Bush was a negative one. Yes, Bush really was stupid sounding at times, yes, he did sit in silence for seven minutes when told of the Towers being under attack, but give him some credit. I’m sure somewhere in his presidency he did the “right thing” and took the “right course of action.”
