Fahrenheit 11/9: The Trump card?

Fahrenheit 11/9 (2018) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for profanity and disturbing images
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.21.18

Half a dozen indignant documentaries ago, back in 2004, Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 was a well-executed indictment of the over-reactive, post-9/11 policies that stoked public terror to foment what we now know were ill-advised wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: military endeavors that did nothing but further destabilize an already dangerous Middle East environment.

Unable to execute a citizen's arrest of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, filmmaker and
provocateur Michael Moore settles for watering the man's home and front yard from a
tanker truck laden with Flint's contaminated water.

That film also quite mercilessly scrutinized the feckless, post-crisis response of the Republican president — George W. Bush — who seemed to have no clue how to handle the aftermath of such a situation.

So here we are, 14 years later, and Moore’s kinda-sorta sequel targets a different Republican president: one apparently hell-bent on transforming this country into a fascist dictatorship.

The picture ain’t pretty.

Neither is Fahrenheit 11/9 at times, which — even for Moore — seems unnecessarily disorganized. His shtick is quite familiar by now, and this new film is the usual mélange of unsettling facts, caustic commentary, damning archival footage, eye-rolling stunts and occasional street theater. But it’s harder to follow Moore’s chain of logic this time; the dots don’t connect quite as well.

Isolated sequences are far more persuasive — and shocking — than the package into which they’re wrapped. He repeatedly states the obvious: The country is in a bad place right now, in great part because of obscenely rich white guys who believe they can get away with anything, and are determined to consolidate their power at the expense of the other 99 percent.

Much of this information dump is depicted against Moore’s calm, well-modulated, off-camera narration. No matter how heinous the images — and some of the sequences are guaranteed to make your blood boil — he never raises his voice, at all times sounding like a longtime friend conversing over a cup of coffee on the front porch. It’s remarkably effective, since his tranquil, seemingly bewildered, occasionally mildly disapproving tone allows us to achieve rage or righteous indignation on our own.

Much smarter than hectoring viewers with shrill indictments.

But as to how we got into this mess, Moore’s cause-and-effect “explanations” function better as water cooler conversation-starters, than as useful theories. And as to how we solve the current crisis … well … suggestions aren’t terribly forthcoming. That said, Moore is buoyed by the efforts of Florida’s high school anti-gun activists, and their successful nationwide rallies; and by the West Virginia schoolteachers who shut down every single one of the state’s public schools, en route to successfully getting their modest demands, and of the copycat movements inspired by their actions.

We spend considerable time with these two events, both of which are undeniably uplifting. Moore visibly admires the young Parkland activists, and a brief conference room chat with them elicits a droll rejoinder. Responding to one student’s claim that they hope to rescue the country from the misguided efforts of previous generations, Moore suggests, “Well, we must have done something right; we raised you guys.”

“No,” one girl snaps back, with a grin, “I was raised by social media.”

I’m not sure whether to be impressed by her savvy, or worried by her statement’s implications.

Where to Invade Next: A whimsical and revelatory journey

Where to Invade Next (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity, asexual nudity, drug use and brief violent images
By Derrick Bang 

Guerilla documentarian Michael Moore has matured considerably as a filmmaker, since debuting with 1989’s Roger & Me. I daresay he also has gained wisdom during the intervening quarter-century.

After learning how an Italian couple has traveled the world and enjoyed fabulous holidays,
thanks to their six weeks of paid vacation each year, Michael Moore, right, symbolically
plants the American flag in their living room, in order to formally "invade" their country
and thus "steal" this fabulous idea.

He’s still mightily dismayed, disappointed and disgusted by the inexorably advancing death of the American dream, but he has gotten much smarter about the way he presents such information. Where to Invade Next is a playfully sly bit of cinematic propaganda, with a message that becomes inescapable through repetition.

In a nutshell: The United States can do better. As a country, as a culture, as a people.

Moore’s new film is, at times, an enchanting travelogue: a trip that centers mostly on Western European countries, with the corpulent and disheveled filmmaker serving as guide, his dryly mordant commentary at times making him sound like an edgier Bill Bryson.

Moore is “invading” these various countries only in a rhetorical sense, as an excuse to highlight and subsequently “steal” socio-economic concepts that appear to work superbly Over There, so that they can be made to work equally well Right Here. His rationale is cheeky but incisive; if we’ve genuinely invaded countries in the past for oil, or illusory political control, why not do so for more rational reasons?

He cheerfully acknowledges cherry-picking from countries that have their own problems, but that’s all right; as he notes, early on, “I’m after the flowers, not the weeds.”

His journey begins in Italy, where a typical couple extols the virtues of their roughly six (or even seven) weeks of paid vacation per year, not to mention the five months’ paid maternity leave granted new mothers. OK, fine; no surprise there. What employee wouldn’t delight in such treatment?

The point is hammered home more persuasively when two different company owners agree with the underlying premise: that well-rested employees work harder, and become sick less frequently. There’s also a genuine sense of bonhomie and mutual respect between workers and owners: a feeling of family.

More tellingly, the owners don’t feel obliged to make themselves obscenely rich, by cutting back staff salaries.

Capitalism, a Love Story: Broken hearts

Capitalism: A Love Story (2009) • View trailer for Capitalism: A Love Story
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: R, and quite stupidly, for brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.2.09
Buy DVD: Capitalism: A Love Story• Buy Blu-Ray: Capitalism: A Love Story [Blu-ray]

I keep waiting for the outrage to kick in.

California's foolish experiment with deregulated power, which led to rolling blackouts in the summer of 2000, massive homeowner energy bills and the "surprising" revelation that the state's wholesale electricity marketplace had been gamed, didn't do it.

Filmmaker and agent provocateur Michael Moore tries one final time to obtain
an audience with the CEO of General Motors, but gets no farther than the glass
doors leading to the lobby. (The irony, in the wake of GM's eventual fate,
can't be missed.)

The big lies spun in the wake of 9/11, which allowed the Bush administration to strip away freedoms granted by the Bill of Rights, didn't do it ... not even more recently, as the breathtaking degree of prevarication has become more blatant.

The federal government's staggeringly inept response to Hurricane Katrina didn't do it.

Gasoline prices that crested above $4 per gallon in 2008 didn't do it.

The health care industry's disenfranchisement of an ever-expanding sector of the American population hasn't done it. Worse yet, shrilly hysterical right-wing blowhards have conned the easily swayed into defending the very industry that routinely denies them medical assistance.

I keep wondering: When will we, as a nation, finally come to our senses and recognize that the increasing corporate hammerlock under which we now serve, much like feudal serfs, has got to stop?

Filmmaker Michael Moore obviously wonders the same thing, and he's getting tired. The weary disbelief can be heard in his voice-over narration for Capitalism: A Love Story, as he rallies his team for one more round. The poor guy must feel like Sisyphus, forever rolling the boulder up the hillside, hoping each time that some of us will come along and shoulder part of the load.

Where is our modern Joseph Welch, who during the 1954 Army hearings quite famously deflated Sen. Joseph McCarthy by saying, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?"

Surely Moore can't be the only person willing to ask that question of the Wall Street titans and corporate CEOs who orchestrated our current financial crisis — beginning quite craftily, as this documentary suggests, when Ronald Reagan was elected president — and capped their financial coup d'état by maneuvering massive bailout funds from U.S. taxpayers ... which were granted with absolutely no strings attached. No checks and balances.

Actually, my vote for Welch's modern-day successor would be U.S. Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), a tough-talking spitfire with the gumption to expose this financial chicanery for what it is: outright theft. Kaptur is this film's shining star: the belle of a ball attended by far too few like-minded souls.