selenak

Fahrenheit 9/11 started in Germany last Thursday, and so yesterday I finally saw it, together with the Aged Parents. As there have been already hundreds of reviews, both pro and con, I’m going to concentrate on something which I don’t think has been pointed out yet so much.

Believe it or not, this movie actually awakens sympathy for Americans abroad. See, chances are that most people watching it in Europe are already convinced the Iraq War never was about weapons of mass destruction or liberating the Iraqi people, and they never thought of Bush as anything but a none-too bright walking, talking assembly of the worst assembly of anti-American clichés you could find. Also, the Bush dynasty being in bed with the Saudis isn’t news, either (nor unique to the Bush clan, or Republicans, or indeed Americans).

However, what people here aren’t widely aware of anymore are ordinary American people and the terrible circumstances they can be in. You get the high tech bombings of Baghdad in the news, you get the “embedded” stuff of patriotic pronouncements by soldiers, you get the ghastly Abu Ghraib pictures. What you don’t get is what Moore shows in his film – areas of unemployment looking every bit as poor and run down as the pre-war Baghdad footage he used, with the army being the only way out, soldiers in hospitals with missing limbs and twitchy faces who will never recover again, and, most poignantly, the families of dead soldiers. It has already been said but it bears repeating – the scenes with Lila Lipscomb, patriotic mother of a military family who never lets the flag she puts out touch the earth because it would be disrespectful, going from supporting the war to crying for her dead son and the futility of it all, are easily the most powerful and devastating of the movie. (More about her here.) They also form a kind of reply to an earlier scene where we see an Iraqi woman after a bombing crying with equal rage and despair, asking “why?” and calling on Allah. After the film was over, I listened to the people talking. One woman said “those poor people”, and she wasn’t referring only to the Iraquis. She meant the Americans as well. A lot of viewers remarked on the pity and sympathy they felt for the American people now, and how this was the other face of the US, as opposed to the one Bush and Rumsfeld showed.

Scattered additional thoughts:
- this is easily the most restrained of Moore’s movies, but it still could have used some snipping; the stunt with the Congressmen being asked to enlist their kids was superfluos, especially since the point about rich and poor was already made
- otoh, not using the familiar 9/11 footage of the planes crashing into the towers but instead going for audio only, with a black screen, and then footage of the stunned and grieving people in the streets was inspired and helped to counter any sensation of overexposure; it felt as horrible as when it happened.