Fahrenheit 9/11 Notes

"But the goat did some things that made the girl's dad mad."
Verse from My Pet Goat, a book read by George W. Bush on September 11th 2001

At the time of writing, the opening screenings of Fahrenheit 9/11 at the 24th Cambridge Film Festival have already sold out. Across the Atlantic, where Fahrenheit 9/11 opened on Friday 25th June, the film trounced the Box Office generating $24m during its opening weekend, an amount surpassing director Michael Moore’s previous documentary Bowling for Columbine’s entire US domestic gross.

Fahrenheit 9/11, referencing Ray Bradbury and the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks, picks up on the curse of our age, to live in ‘interesting times’ dwelling on the depressing unreality of the last four years: Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke got the year and the shape that embodies our fears and hopes right, but not the precipitating event. Kicking off with the contested 2000 US elections where Republican nominee Al Gore won the popular vote but failed to become president, Fahrenheit 9/11 rolls off a litany of grievances Moore has with the ‘failed Texas oilman’ who became the ‘leader of the free world’, George W. Bush Jr, culminating in the Iraq war a conflict with a county Moore takes pains to admit ‘has never invaded the US’. In the aftermath the scramble for reconstruction contracts has been declared a goldmine dominated by oil and construction firms, coincidentally the family professions of Bush and the architect of 9/11 Osama Bin Laden.

Scrutinising the well publicised links between the Bush family and the ruling dynasties of Saudi Arabia, Moore progresses to examine the atmosphere of fear the Bush administration has exploited through national bodies such as the Department for Homeland Security and the ‘Patriot Act’, institution and legislation that both echo the totalitarian themes of Fahrenheit 451. Such developments should be fiction yet they are fact, reaching their contrary apogee with the anti-war marches last March, where the liberal masses were protesting against the liberation of a brutal dictatorship. Since then this level of stagnant wonder has tragically mounted trapping us all to appear in the great disaster movie of our times, starring not Bill Pullman, Harrison Ford or Charlton Heston as the President, but a performer more akin to Leslie Nielson’s woeful appearance in the Oval Office in Scary Movie 3.

Travelling to Iraq via the Afghanistan ‘oil pipeline war’, where Bin Laden was given a ‘two month head-start’, Moore consolidates his arguments by talking to the people on the ground; the US soldiers on the Iraq front, the bereaved families back home and the military recruiters cynically targeting the US’ poorest neighbourhoods for fresh ‘grunts’ to facilitate burgeoning US business interests abroad in this 21st century reality television spin on Vietnam.

Michael Moore, the director and demagogue of this well manoeuvred one-man coup d’etat, barely seems to have stayed still since directing Roger and Me his debut film back in the late eighties, about the devastating effects of General Motor’s downsizing on his hometown Flint, Michigan. Since then he has fronted TV Nation (memorable not least in the UK for unleashing Louis Theroux upon the world) and branched out into fictional film making with Canadian Bacon, where the US declares war on Canada. The echoes of this spill into South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut, where the same war occurs, the link here being that South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are interviewed and provide animation for Bowling for Columbine, Moore’s signature and breakthrough piece so far. Examining why the Columbine High School massacre occurred, Bowling for Columbine melded Moore’s anti-corporate satirical bite and folksy Americana with a tragedy that made a nation question itself. The result was an Academy Award and international infamy, not least for politicising the normally conservative Academy Award ceremony and demonising Charlton Heston.

In this world of utter voter apathy, cinemagoers are working themselves up into a frenzy to see the big screen version of what basically amounts to being nothing more than a party political broadcast originating from a single individual who resides in a country the majority of the (worldwide) audience don’t live in. Televised political statements are generally squalid slices of tedium guaranteeing turn-off, yet Fahrenheit 9/11 is fast becoming the greatest cinematic turn-on this year. The agenda is simple and writ large throughout: Vote Bush Out.

Now, fresh from the Cannes Film Festival with the esteemed Palm D’Or – the first documentary to win it in 47 years – and a dubious distribution battle with Disney, who cut their support a year ago despite Moore’s claims otherwise, Fahrenheit 9/11 has yet to confront it’s toughest hurdle, not box office dollar but domestic regime change. After all, the next US Presidential election will be in November and despite any number of foreign accolades it will be the US public who will call the day, particularly those who live in Florida.