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Review

Moore’s documentarian skills reach a new level of maturity in Fahrenheit 9/11, his scathing indictment of President George W. Bush’s occupation of the Oval Office. As he did in Roger & Me and Bowling for Columbine, Moore communicates massive quantities of complex information with clarity, humor and a decidedly anti-administration, leftist bent. He brilliantly uses news footage and taped interviews to let the protagonists speak for themselves, intercutting recent assertions with past statements to the contrary, putting the color-coded danger-level system into a different perspective, documenting business ties over the past thirty years between the Bush family and the bin Laden family, and in general asserting that the emperor is buck naked. The film starts in Florida during the 2000 presidential election, as a grinning Dubya, sitting next to brother and Florida governor Jeb, assures a reporter that, don’t worry, he’s gonna win this state. The next few years are related with minimum exposition: with gut-wrenching sounds of crashing explosions, a dark screen eventually brings up the terrified faces of people staring up unbelievingly at inconceivable horror, looking at images now etched into our national psyche; months earlier, intelligence reports to the White House warned against bin Laden and plans to execute terror attacks within the United States, possibly with planes. But Dubya had other things on his mind, like finding a reason to attack Saddam Hussein, a priority before he assumed the office of the presidency. No tie was ever discovered between Hussein and 9/11. Even when relating the most abstract and convoluted data, Moore never loses sight of the people most immediately affected by the grandiose plans of little men. We meet a woman who was proud when her son joined the military, but has come to wonder if he died for a just cause. We meet young men for whom the military is their best economic option. The film grabs you for its full 121 minutes, and stays with you for hours, days, afterwards. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a monumental achievement that will elicit with equal power anger and grief.