CANNES - At the end of the 4 pm screening of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, the film and its director received a 10-minute plus standing ovation. Which shows that if you preach to the choir, they'll get the message.
On the other hand, Fahrenheit 9/11 demonstrates the innate dangers involved in constructing a film out of ongoing current events. A year ago, this may have seemed a daring project -- looking at the ties between the Bush and Bin Laden families, attacking President Sequel's disinclination to seriously investigate the "intelligence failure" that let 9/11 happen, and the ongoing -- dare we call it a quagmire? Yeah, why not? -- quagmire of the occupation of Iraq, the film has been essentially superseded by the real events.
In the wake of books like Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies, the climbing body count and the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, Moore doesn't seem like a voice crying in the wilderness, which he certainly was when he was booed at the Oscars. With Bush's approval ratings slipping below 40 per cent, the film may simply be irrelevant by the time it opens.
That said, Fahrenheit 9/11 is, to my mind a less daring and interesting film than Bowling For Columbine. Bowling is a film that pretends to be about one thing (guns) and is really about something else, the way that the media is used to create in America a culture of fear. It's a film with mixed media -- the cartoon history of America is a juicy treat -- and mixed messages, and the chorus of howls from right wing nuts trying to nitpick the film to death shows just how effective it was. Note that they never go after Moore's fundamental claims, just the details -- Heston's speech was cut together from two separate speeches, so everything in the film is a lie.
Right.
Fahrenheit 9/11 is very big on documenting and assembling existing news material. Not surprising. The White House certainly wasn't going to give Moore access. It documents, and documents again what it needs to ask. Why did a whole bunch of Saudis and members of the Bin Laden family get private planes out of the US when most of the domestic airfleet was grounded? How much does Dubya's personal fortune owe to Saudi investment in those dry hole oil exploration companies he ran before he got part ownership of the Texas Rangers? Plus any number of questions that have been fairly well documented by the 9/11 query and people like Richard Clarke.
He can't entirely resist the antic moment -- driving around Washington in an ice cream truck reading the Patriot Act aloud is a scene that we could do with a lot more of.
But in the second half of the film, he locks onto the ideal figure -- a gold star mother whose son was a helicopter pilot shot down in Iraq.
By staying off camera as much as possible, as his very presence seems to irritate conservatives, he's essentially placed himself unassailably on the side of the good. Of course, Donald Rumsfeld is not above questioning the patriotism of the 9/11 widows who want to know why what happened happened, so who knows. No doubt Limbaugh or Hannity or Coulter will find some way to go after them.
Quote du jour: "We have a president asleep at the wheel...If you have the role of commander in chief, you should pay more attention. I would have tracked down the people responsible for 9/11 and I would bring them down. Why hold back Special Forces for two months? What's going on?" -- Guess who?
Update on the Brain Teaser -- As far as I, or anyone else I know, can figure the living director with the oldest directorial credit, is Vincent Sherman, 98 years-old, who made his directorial debut in 1939 with The Return Of Dr. X., a Warner Brothers film that people don't revive for Humphrey Bogart career retrospectives. Sherman began as a stage actor -- he appeared in Counsellor At Law in 1933 - and had a career of extreme competence. His films included a couple of good Bette Davis vehicles, Mr. Skeffington and Old Acquaintance, a nifty Bogart B, All Through the Night, where Bogey takes on a gang of Nazis in New York!
There seems to be no one alive who directed a silent movie (in the silent movie era).
