Fahrenheit 9/11
It seems that every man and his ‘blog is reviewing Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 film. This means, that the next cool thing to hit the ‘net will be to make a stand and go out of your way not review this film, with a claim that “you don’t want to be like everyone else” or “there’s already enough written about this.” Consider this me starting the new trend.
Last night I saw the flick with Maggie at an advanced screening in Mt. Lawley’s Astor cinema. It was ram-jammed to the tits in the foyer before we went in. People were complaining that they were going to faint. Clearly there was high interest in what Mickey had to say.
Whilst I knew that it was never going to be a subjective documentary, I went in attempting to see through some of sheer anti-Bush feeling, and find the truth. Maggie and I have a saying that when you have two sides to a story, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. I was thinking I could employ this concept to the film and maybe I’d learn a thing along the way, while not being as completely blindsided by Michael Moore’s extreme opinion.
That quickly becomes hard to do when you see Bush acting like a mega-dickhead. Seriously, the guy has no clue. Not one tiny clue. I won’t ruin the movie and give examples, other than the final quote from the film.
The actual quote goes “Fool me once; shame on you. Fool me twice; shame on me” indicating that if you don’t learn your lesson the first time, you deserve to get burnt the second.
You’ll walk away and talk about the issues he presents, which I think is the strongest feature of any of Michael Moore’s films. The thoughts provoked after the film are the ones that might save the US in the near future.
I was pro the war on Iraq, but that was a pretty unfounded belief (I’ll admit). Now, I really wonder if Iraq ever wanted to be liberated in the first place. American soldiers are either dumb as a doorknob, or they were asking “what are we doing here?”
In the mean time, check out this funny-assed Flash cartoon about Kerry and Bush. Look out for big Arnie. I really hope Kerry wins now. He has three purple hearts :)
While I’ll admit that there has to be someone presenting the ideas from the other side otherwise you’ll quickly become another Iraq or even Singapore where media is censored, I don’t believe you should so easily put your faith in Michael Moore.
I think you’ll find that Michael Moore has twisted a lot of things to make the outcome suit what he is trying to say. You’ll probalby also find that we as Australians won’t have any idea what the USA wants or thinks, let alone what the Iraqi people want or think. To claim that the US troops are stupid is not fair either, and I remember a saying along the lines of “If a person never has something that they is willing to FIGHT for then that person really doesn’t believe in anything”. I think that is absolutely true. The troops joined for a number of reasons and short of going AWOL have no choice in the matter now.
Also like in Australia there are two sides to a country. While the US is losing troops every day to Iraqi militia and terrorist groups there is quite obviously a large number of Iraqis that welcomed the removal of Saddam. You could see why too.
Back to the original point though. While Moore may have some valid points, and it seems quite obvious now that *even if* our collective leaders did believe there were WMD in Iraq in the end there probably weren’t. However people have quickly forgotten that there were already sanctions from the UN that Iraq was breaking, also teh attrocities that were known of and so on, this alone shoudl have been enough for the UN to act. So basically it’s already been shown that a number of Moore’s points are incorrect and it seems like another case of Super Size Me, where the facts may not be correct, and the person may twist or not tell the whoel truth, but at least it will make people aware of the issues, generate some discussion and perhaps change a few things for the better.
Subjective means one perspective, while objective is external and balanced…
I want to see this!!
Rich, me to! I’ll be in that if you hook up some people to go with.
I downloaded this and watched it the weekend before last. :) Don’t worry - I plan on seeing it at the cinema too - give the man his dues.
What I liked about this film was that Micheal Moore simply showed you what happened, rather than made judgement calls. He leaves you (to a large extent) to make up your own mind. Sure the footage he chooses is chosen to get HIS point of view accross, but a lot of it is simply *what happened* and couldn’t be shown any other way.