F 9/11

I'm pretty tired of talking about it, but I figure I ought to give my Farenheit 9/11 thoughts. The film was about what I expected it to be. There were some startling revelations and connections made:

The Carlyle group, with members Bush I, James Baker, amongst others, was scheduled to meet on 9/11 with one of their principal investors: a member of the Bin Laden family. Weird stuff.

Out that of 535 congressmen, only one has a child serving in the military. Very sad.

Beyond some of the interesting tidbits of info, I'm glad someone is out there making popular political documentary-type movies. That's exciting.

But from a story teller standpoint, I think Moore has gotten in a little over his head. I liked his early work, Roger and Me, especially, when he was super funny and showed us this part of America that people didn't think about all that much: people in a company town after the company leaves.

This movie is way more serious and I find myself more critical of a serious film than a funny film. For a funny film, if it makes me laugh, the veracity of the information doesn't matter. If it's serious, then I put my thinking cap on and start to question.

There's an edited sequence of happy go lucky Iraqi's, cut to a big US missle attack, cut to Iraqi children in hospital. The footage itself isn't of the same people or the same place, but it's clear what the edit says - these were happy, normal people, we bomb innocents, the kids end up in the hospital. No exactly traditional documentary....

Kuleshov did his famous experiment on editing, showing a shot of a actor, a cut to a cup of soup in one take, a cut to dead women in a coffin in another, and a cut to a child playing with a teddy bear in another. The test audiences interpreted the emotional state of the actor differently each time, despite it being the exact same shot of the actor. It demonstrated the power of editing.

In the end, I think Moore will make a grip of money off this film. But if his goal is to rally support away from Bush, I'm not sure he's convincing the "on the fence crowd" much. Sure, he's got a bunch of supporters, but I found myself feeling bad for Bush in this movie. I kept imagining what someone could do with various clips of my life - they could make me look awesome or horrible.

Speaking of which, how did they get all that archive footage? Amazing stuff.

In the short term, the movie's got buzz, but in the long term, I think the comedy (the type Moore uses in his early films) has a larger societal impact. This film won at Canne because of the political stance. And while there's a place for political posturing and debate, those types of arguments tend to feel dated quickly.

Hitler put Charlie Chaplin on his short list of American's to be dealt with. It's safe to say, Bush is no Hitler and Moore is no Charlie Chaplin.

UPDATE: Not according to this guy. Whoa.

UPDATE UDPATE: Per the comment - I should have referred those "these folks" instead of this guy (who was merely archiving the allusions to point out their stupidity).

But hey, it's something to talk about...