Well Michael Moore is saying Fahrenheit 911 is the temperature at which freedom burns...will we see this released on July 4, 2004 in the USA as planned or will Disney bury this until 2005? The battle is on and here's the first review of the film...
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In a Cannes Film Festival that has so far failed to produce many surprises, this is the one film everyone was waiting to see. Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 arrived in a blaze of publicity despite - at the time of writing - being without a major US distributor and with no money for advertising.
A chilling investigation into the four years of US President George W Bush's time at the White House, the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the Iraq war, the bottom line is it delivers a devastating blow to the Bush administration in the run-up to its re-election campaign. |
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Put together with Moore's trademark mixture of wry humour and forthright opinions - last seen in his gun-culture study Bowling For Columbine, which won him an Oscar for Best Documentary in 2003 - the two-hour film brought tears to the eyes of some audience members at the advanced press screening I attended.
As Moore himself said, during a Q&A on the Croisette on Sunday 16 May, "You will see things in this film that you have not seen before. You will learn things that you have not learned before. We have footage, because I was able to sneak crews into Iraq and get them embedded with the US military, without them knowing it was Michael Moore shooting. They are totally fucked."
Beginning with a prologue that briefly covers Bush's first eight months in office - covering much the same ground as Moore's best-selling book 'Stupid White Men' - the film is roughly divided into two halves: 9/11 and the Iraq war.
In the first part, Moore outlines how Bush - in his days on the boards of various oil companies - benefited from Saudi Arabian money, in particular from the family of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden; how 24 members of Bin Laden's family living in the US were allowed to leave just days after the events of 9/11; how Bush opposed a panel investigating the terror attacks and censored 28 pages of a Congress report; how Bush had dinner with Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar - so close to the President's family, he's nicknamed 'Bandar Bush' - on 13 September, 2001, despite 15 of the 19 suicide bombers, as well as Bin Laden himself, being from that nation. |
Cut together with some well-researched footage of Bush (who even meets Moore at one point, and tells him "to get a real job"), the film shows the President dismissing Bin Laden as a threat. "I just don't spend much time on him," he says at one point, with Moore revealing that Bin Laden was given a "two month head start" before US Special Forces went into Afghanistan to find him. As Moore points out "the 'war' president had a new target - the American people". Showing how the Bush administration set out to perpetrate the fear factor among Americans - "they played us like an organ", admits Congressman Jim McDermott - Moore argues that Bush, in a ruse to deflect attention from his links to the Saudis and the Bin Laden family, turned the US's attention towards the nation of Iraq.
It's at this point that Moore - off-screen for the first 45 minutes - brings himself more into the picture as the film focuses on the war with Iraq, a country "that has never invaded the US" as Moore puts it. He rides around in an ice-cream van in Washington DC reading aloud from the Patriot Act - designed to share 'private' information for the sake of preventing terrorist acts - for all the Congressman too busy to read the bill before they passed it. He returns to his economically deprived hometown of Flint, Michigan to show how the US military set about recruiting impoverished young men and women. He goes to Capitol Hill to ask Congress members if they would send their children to fight the war in Iraq. Most upsettingly of all, he speaks to a woman, Lila Lipscomb, who lost her son in the war.
Mixed into this seething cauldron is the aforementioned sneak footage, in which US soldiers unwittingly reveal how they do not seem to be fighting to liberate Iraq from the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. One soldier explains how he likes to listen to a CD hooked up to a tank as he goes into battle, with the lyrics "burn motherfucker burn" ringing in his ears.
What will happen to Fahrenheit 9/11 remains to be seen. The heat around it is already palpable, although its future remains uncertain. As it stands, Miramax, who produced the film, is looking to buy it back from its parent company Disney, who bankrolled the project to the tune of $6 million only to refuse to release it. "I have a contract that says Buena Vista Distribution [Disney's distribution arm] will distribute this film," says Moore. "I don't know what else you need. In one viewing by a low-level production executive, [after] a report [went] back to Eisner - who still hasn't seen the film - suddenly the film has no distribution."
Proposing a 4 July release in the US - which would pit the film against Spider-Man 2 - Moore feels it is imperative that the film be shown as soon as possible. "We won't accept a release date that conveniently pushes the movie beyond the election, so that Americans can't see it. That is unacceptable and that is the intent behind trying to stop this film in America."
-James Mottram
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Two years after his Cannes 55th Anniversary Prix for Bowling For Columbine, Michael Moore is back on the Croisette with Fahrenheit 9/11, screening in competition. The documentary opens with the contested presidential election in the year 2000, and moves on to 9/11 exposing relations between the Bush and the Bin Laden families, how the American leaders have instilled an overriding climate of false fear, the witch hunt spirit of the Patriot Act, the armed forces in Afghanistan and the “non-justified” war in Iraq.
Interspersed with footage never seen before, with comments from experts and from those who are the backbone of America, Michael Moore presents his latest investigation into the rise of the “failed Texas oilman to leader of the free world.” Only Michael Moore could find the full irony in such sombre terrain, by turns determinedly truthful, scathingly humorous, intensely thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining.
Michael Moore took on a full house of journalists single-handed after the competition screening of his documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11, this morning. He fielded questions during a full hour. Here are a few excerpts.
On his intentions: ”When I make a movie, it's a movie I'd like to see on a Friday night [...] I wanted to say something about post-9/11 in America: What's happened to us as a people. This time I was the straight man and Bush had all the jokes [...] And I hope it will influence people leaving the theatre, encourage them to be good citizens [...]”
On what is going to shock people: ”There is footage they have never seen. They will see things never seen before, starting with Bush's military record, both the year 2000 original document and the 2004 document that has the name James R. Bath blackened [...] You saw the first abuse segments of Iraqi detainees outside of prison walls; you were the first to see that today [...] The American people don't like things being kept from them and this film will pull back the curtain on what is going on and they will respond accordingly.”
On the theatrical release: ”No, it will not be first seen on television; it was made for the screen...It will be released in the US before the election. I am confident that Miramax will make sure they see this film [...] Miramax has made available the funds and money – before the film comes out - to update it if needed in the next six weeks. It is however a finished film.”
If you were President: ”We have a president asleep at the wheel [...] If you have the role of commander in chief, you should pay more attention. I would have tracked down the people responsible for 9/11 and I would bring them down. Why hold back Special Forces for two months? What's going on?”
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