Fahrenheit 11/9 **** (2018, director Michael Moore ) – Movie Review

Film-maker Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 11/9 is a provocative, devastating and depressing critique of the state of American politics, and what a state it is in, according to Moore. We are on the very edge of the abyss. at our very last moment to do something about the mess the Democrats have got us in, and take to the streets in direct action to stop President Donald J Trump before he takes over as a despot who does’t not need elections to stay in power.

If Moore has got it in for Trump he has also got it in for both Clintons and Obama. He really has it in for the Democrats, bitterly blaming them for not abolishing the Electoral College in 2000, and thus ensuring there is no democracy in America. Obama came to Flint to sort out the mess, and, once there, only pretended to drink the water, a photo op stunt he pulled twice before jetting off back to safety. He sent drone missiles into Syria and killed civilians and deported immigrants, Moore says.

How the ***k did it all go wrong? It started with Gwen Stefani apparently. Yes, Michael Moore has our attention. And, once he starts, he keeps in there solidly for 128 minutes, with never a dull moment.

A lot of the film is very serious – it has to be as it concerns gun violence and grassroots political movements – so it is lucky that it is also very entertaining. Moore truly knows how to amuse us while lecturing us on this, that and the other. Agree with him or not, Moore must be considered a good thing, both as film-maker and rabble rouser. His long section seriously comparing Trump now with Hitler at the time of the Nuremberg rallies is truly scary. [He superimposes Trump’s voice over Hitler’s rantings, a cheap trick, maybe, but effective, and funny at first,at least till you realise it isn’t funny at all, and the smile freezes of your lips.]

His long section with the apparently deliberate and callous poisoning of a poor town’s water supply for political and financial gain is truly scary. This is the terrifying story of Moore’s hometown of Flint, Michigan. It begs to be told. It needs to be told. The gun lobbyists trying to maintain their control of power and the political situation with gun-violence afflicted schoolkids on the march, rallying against them and domestic weapons, is truly scary. It begs to be told. It needs to be told.

A lot of the facts and stories are already known, some well known, but Moore brings it all up fresh seeming in polished versions of the old news. The research seems good, the evidence is up there on screen to speak for itself, and it is well and often imaginatively presented. Moore is a magnificent showman as well as left-wing political and social agitator.

Moore wants Americans out on the streets marching, protesting, taking direct action, like they did in the Sixties. He is a Sixties child, sees those alternative lifestyle views as the correct values – the values of the disenfranchised majority. So few Americans vote. They have just given up because the Democrats have adopted the right-wing values of the Republican party. The silent majority are the real Americans. They must strike, literally, while the iron is hot, to take down both Republicans and Democrats, and establish a new order, government of the people, by the people, for the people – an actual democracy, which, he says, America never has had.

Yes, the truth hurts, and Moore come at the audience with a velvet fist. If he wasn’t intelligent, informed and amusing, he would be scary too. In the meantime, he paints a picture of America as a scary place, ruled over by a very scary man.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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