A Political Time Bomb

Michael Moore may be America’s answer to Costa-Gavras. He has dropped a political time bomb with Fahrenheit9/11, one that will tick until November. Absolutely scorching, utterly watchable and often hilarious, itis a scathing indictment of George Bush and his cabinet. A planned sortie flown right in their faces and awelcome relief in a political year when both candidates are pro-war and tend to merge on many issues.

To think that Americans were nearly deprived of this political drama, almost prevented from seeing thecompelling images and left to their sanitized television screens. Disney refused to distribute the film andfinanciers threatened to pull out. It was deemed too political in a political year. Inflicting Passion ofthe Christ on unsuspecting Americans is one thing, opening up the political debate is quite another. Nowthat the film is finally released, pro-Republican groups are urging a boycott. That means a sure winnerbecause Fahrenheit 9/11 is Passion of the Christ for the anti-Bush crowd and just as many faithfulare lining up. The mainstream media, predictably I might add, are irritated because Moore connected the dotswhen they clearly failed to. So the stream of questioning articles, raising of endless doubts about his"facts." A trifle troubling in the era of embedded journalism.

But Moore, the large, lumbering, man who broke through the Hollywood chandeliers, is saying a big "ThankYou" to his critics, specially the protest organizers, for giving him even more publicity than Disney’sabdication and the Palme d'Or at Cannes had ensured. He promises to send them a Christmas card. That heis a partisan is not news. That he is an unabashed populist is also well known. In every film, he goes back tohis working class roots in Flint, Michigan and connects real life to decisions made by politicians. At leasthe is not cynical enough to claim he is fair when he is clearly not. Art cannot be made by consensus and itshould never try to please everyone. And as Costa-Gavras said, "when it does, it’s no longer anything todo with art." The film is a stimulating blend of art and propaganda, investigative journalism and"gotcha" trickery, often brilliant but sometimes gratuitous. It is a small step towards balancing thedebate.

The Washington premier of Fahrenheit 9/11 was every inch a political affair and the hottest ticket in town.Television talking heads, movie stars, congressmen and senators (of the Democratic ilk), Hollywood moguls,prominent columnists, politicos -- the hall was teeming with important faces. Every time you turned, youbumped into a Zbigniew Brzezinski or a Sally Field. CNN faces, Newsweek pundits and talk show hosts werespilling out of every row. I have never seen such a large gathering of Washington movers and shakers in tenyears of reporting from the American capital. Every Democrat worth his name was there, including those Mooretwisted as spineless wimps in the film for first validating Bush’s election as president and later his rushto attack Iraq.

Was it a signal? Are the Democrats getting battle ready? Moore would like them to, as well as to use hisfilm as a weapon. He is quite open about his purpose -- defeat Bush. The film opened in 900 theatres -- a rarehonour for a documentary and a blessing in the age of largely content-free Hollywood cinema. It has beendubbed "required viewing" for anyone who wants to be part of the debate.

Moore brings George Bush live from his vacation ranch, his black tie fund raisers, his White House trystswith Saudi royals, and most importantly from a classroom in Florida where he was reading My Pet Goat tochildren at the time the planes hit the World Trade Centre. The footage -- never shown on network TV -- is anamazing seven minute horror show where Bush continues sitting on his chair, looking nonplussed.Not a pictureof a man taking charge. Not a man who inspires confidence. As an assessment is made about who was behind theattacks, Bush doesn’t zero in on the Saudis but on Iraq, asking his now famous counter terrorism chief,Richard Clarke, to find an Iraq connection.

Moore builds his case against Bush as a man fronting for his rich friends (Bush cheerily saying he isamidst the "haves and have mores"), including members of the Saudi royal family. The ties with the Saudis,who have ploughed money into Bush’s companies from the early days, have ended in many unsavory deals. Hebadgers home his point that the war on terrorism is a political tool, that the war against Iraq a monumentalerror built on fake evidence. Despite evidence that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals, insteadof confronting the Saudis, Bush gives Saudi Arabia’s ambassador-for-ever, Prince Bandar, dinner at the WhiteHouse. Shortly after, 124 Saudis, including members of the bin Laden family are allowed to leave the UnitedStates on a private plane with no questions asked. Meanwhile, the rest of the country is grounded and Muslimsfrom lesser countries are put through the wringer. Bandar comes through as the ultimate operator he is,securing royal rights even at a time of tremendous tragedy.

Bush’s key advisers -- Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Rice, Wolfowitz, Cheney -- take major hits with killer soundbitesand unflattering footage usually taken before they go in front of the camera. We discover Bush clowned aroundmaking funny faces before announcing he was about to attack Iraq. We learn the secrets of hair management fromWolfowitz who manufactures a "special" gel right in his mouth and plasters it on his unruly puff.

One of the more damning sequences is from a corporate fest on reconstruction of Iraq where executives areexulting about the money they can make from the war. All real and immortalised on film for posterity. Thenthere is the Carlyle Group, the large, shadowy conglomerate of ex-politicians (like Bush’s dad) and defencecontractors who trade on their name and access to make millions in a day. Moore shows how young Americansoldiers drop bombs listening to music, conduct midnight raids on Iraqi homes to find "insurgents" butleave broken hearts and angry minds. He traces the growing disillusionment among soldiers who from a burst ofoptimism have sunk into despair. They want to go home.

The Iraqi dead and injured, who must only exist in the Al-Jazeera world, are given some time. Fahrenheit9/11 performs an important service -- it shows the Americans that Iraqis are dying too. There is achilling sequence of an Iraqi woman bemoaning the deaths of three of her relatives, a young man talking offinding his friend’s remains under the rubble and dead babies being loaded on a truck. But Moore shies awayfrom putting a number on the Iraqi dead, even though human rights organizations have come up with estimates.The Pentagon claims it doesn’t count Iraqi deaths. Even Moore leaves that part of the story half told.