michael moore – sterow

Remember MIFF? (MIFF Report, Part II)

Film

Apologies for the delays in getting further posts on the Melbourne International Film Festival up. There was always going to be limited opportunity to post during the festival, since so many of the films I was seeing were in the last few days, but things were made worse by difficulties at my day job which caused a few planned films on my schedule to bite the dust. Hopefully my previous plugs for Paul Martin’s Melbourne Film Blog led anybody who was hankering for day-by-day coverage there; the boys over at Hoopla also managed to cover a reasonable number of films. One of the films I missed (El Topo) remains very much on my list to cover on the site.

What I did see was generally pretty good, and I had a better time of it than last year. So here are some quick thoughts on what I did end up seeing.

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Proper Propoganda

Film Film Reviews

Fahrenheit 9/11 (Michael Moore, 2004)

One of the reasons that Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore’s study of the American gun culture, was so wildly successful was that for the most part it renounced the faults of his other work. Columbine was a thoughtful, complex film that avoided the oversimplifications or falsehoods that tended to blemish his earlier films and books. It deservedly catapulted Moore into the public awareness after years as a fringe figure known mainly to left wing political observers, documentary fans, and media buffs. With this new attention coming to Moore during the extremely conservative presidency of George W. Bush, it should not be surprising that Moore would attempt to use his new popularity to launch a concerted attack on the US president. The danger was always that in the resulting film, Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore’s hubris and overzealousness would cause him to lapse back into old habits.

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Mike Moore’s Palme D’Or and Quentin Tarantino’s Casino Royale

Film

Mike Moore winning the Palme D’Or? It seems so bizarre that it is hardly surprising that in all the stories about Fahrenheit 9/11 preceding the festival, nobody had really suggested this as a possibility, despite the film being in competition. I can’t wait to see the film: I loved Bowling for Columbine, and am sympathetic to all but the most outrageous of Moore’s politics. Yet I also fear it may be terrible. Columbine I thought stood head and shoulders above Moore’s other work because he successfully reigned in many of his worst impulses. Moore has a weakness for hyperbole and half-truths that has brought down many of his other films and books, but despite the best attempts of the right to discredit Columbine, nobody really poked any serious holes in it. There is plenty of scope for a really devastating attack on George W. Bush without bending the truth, but I fear Moore’s anger and the praise heaped on him post-Columbine may have gone to his head. I can see Fahrenheit 9/11 descending into hysteria, conspiracy theories and factual error. Let’s hope I’m wrong: for all his faults, Moore popularises the left and has the kind of cross-cultural reach that usually only the right can achieve.

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