Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)0

Fahrenheit 9/11 is one of those doc­u­men­taries that has stayed in my head, con­stantly pro­vok­ing me with its mes­sages and impli­ca­tions since its release, but more impor­tantly as a film, it was a mon­u­men­tal suc­cess that shook peo­ple from all walks of life that were directly or indi­rectly affected by the inci­dent on 9/11.The doc­u­men­tary was made by the infa­mously charis­matic Michael Moore. As fans waited impa­tiently for his awaited doc­u­men­tary that they expected to reveal more truth and dis­cov­er­ies over the unfor­get­table ter­ror­ist act on September 11, would they have expected the doc­u­men­tary to touch on more than just the bombings?This documentary’s pri­mary focus wasn’t actu­ally on the bombings—which was what made it such a sen­sa­tional shocker. The documentary’s pri­mary focus, if you ask any­one who recalled the film or have seen its mar­ket­ing strate­gies, is to label America’s President George W.Bush as a com­plete scoundrel.It spoofs him, pokes fun at him. It changed the minds of Bush’s fans. It was a com­edy that helped peo­ple take their minds of the tragedy at the moments of 9/11. Giving the audi­ence some­thing to blame about. It also touched on the prob­a­bil­ity of what hap­pened prior to the bomb­ings by reveal­ing to the audi­ences that warn­ing pre­mo­ni­tions were high­lighted by offi­cials, despite being ignored. It touched on the intensely shock­ing moments dur­ing the fall of the twin tow­ers. It also drew focus to after­story of the vic­tims, what the sit­u­a­tions were like in both America & Iraq, that helped the entire doc­u­men­tary fill its con­tent with nec­es­sary tes­ti­monies and finds that left audi­ences quenched for their thirst of knowledge.Fahrenheit 9/11 made every viewer see the war in Iraq and its related events in new ways. Whether or not they believed every­thing that Michael Moore felt or said in the film, they know deep down that they’d just went through an expe­ri­ence like no other. Especially since the media had its own Field Day dur­ing the ter­ror­ist con­ster­na­tion, Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore came out with a con­tro­ver­sial bang that went against so many things that were said, explored things that were unsaid as well as ques­tion the viewer with things left yet to say…For exam­ple, the moment in which the Twin Towers crashed, it was depicted that George Bush did noth­ing dur­ing a con­fer­ence in a pre-school les­son, but just sit and stare about. Ironically, Michael Moore’s com­men­tary along with that rare footage, def­i­nitely asked audi­ences “when peo­ple are dying, a nation in need. Why is he read­ing My Pet Goat?”. Or when Michael Moore shows con­tra­dic­tory inter­views with George Bush, it throws out an unsaid ques­tion of “This is who we all voted as the Government? Should we have voted with 2 eyes? Probably for even the right type of peo­ple?” Not only were we begin­ning to see things in new angles and per­spec­tives, but we were also fed ques­tions and aspects of the sit­u­a­tion that we’ve never vis­ited before.In other words, how was the infor­ma­tion exposed or com­pre­hended to the audi­ence that made it so impact­ful? Apart from the nar­ra­tion that back­bones the doc­u­men­tary where fans have con­sid­ered him ‘Voice of America’, the infor­ma­tion in this doc­u­men­tary is vast. Therefore the exposit­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties are equally vast.Michael Moore doesn’t com­pli­cate things though the con­text of his infor­ma­tion is rather exten­sive. By using a cache full of footage that seem reli­able to most eyes. By using strong inter­views with affected vic­tims of the ter­ror­ist act to per­suade audi­ences to believe what­ever Michael Moore is try­ing to tell the audi­ence. By using con­stant con­tra­dic­tions through­out the film to help prove Michael Moore’s stands as an effec­tive trait. By using ele­ments from inter­views, his­tor­i­cal back­grounds and point of view to help raise sus­pi­cions of a con­spir­acy among sol­diers in the army. Michael Moore’s meth­ods of trans­port­ing infor­ma­tion to the audi­ence is suc­cess­ful due to its ‘every way pos­si­ble to con­vince’ tac­ti­cal expositions.Ever since Roger & Me had major con­tro­versy over its his­tor­i­cal order of sequence in the doc­u­men­tary that was accused to be tam­pered with just to get audi­ences to side with Michael Moore, peo­ple have begun to accuse Michael Moore of being inac­cu­rate or in other words, subjective.At times, you do feel that you’re in a secret lec­ture where you’re told infor­ma­tion untold to the rest of the world that you can assume to be the truth—everytime you watch a Michael Moore doc­u­men­tary. At times, you ask your­self, what about the other side of the story, and don’t receive an answer from the film, we begin to sus­pect a tone of bias­ness in his documentary.I strongly defend Michael Moore though. Fahrenheit 9/11 woke peo­ple up and it was the most impor­tant thing at that moment for fel­low cit­i­zens. To know a pos­si­ble truth, a side of the story that was almost NOT revealed to the public.You know, a lot of peo­ple say Michael Moore doesn’t bal­ance the sides of the con­tex­tual top­ics at hand? I’ve just real­ized that his doc­u­men­taries are so effec­tive because he weighs focused on the side of the story that we often over­look or are untold of, when the other side is han­dled by the media itself out­side the cin­ema. That way, his doc­u­men­taries live for­ever. And because audi­ences would have to watch his film, as well as track down news arti­cles of the topic’s time to help bal­ance their con­clu­sion, it’s almost a rev­o­lu­tion­ary tac­tic to get peo­ple to really see the side which he believes is true.Call it sub­jec­tive as much as it is. I call it the sub­ject at hand that we ought to really look at. This is a democ­racy at hand nonethe­less. Michael Moore brings sub­jec­tive­ness in film to a whole dif­fer­ent level Film Reviewed by Joshuah Jayaraj