Mark Reviews Movies: FAHRENHEIT 11/9

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 20, 2018

Michael Moore is no stranger to using a feature-length documentary to take a sitting President to task. He went after George W. Bush with Fahrenheit 9/11, a film that, despite (or maybe even because of) its conspiracy-minded nature, forced you to re-evaluate the ways that Bush and his administration handled domestic and international affairs in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, 2001.

Moore's Fahrenheit 11/9 is a sequel of sorts, in that the filmmaker has felt inclined to take another Republican in the White House to task. The President, of course, is Donald Trump, a man who—since he couldn't campaign on any actual governmental or public service credentials—campaigned for the job by openly appealing to fear, distrust, hatred, and cynicism.

Moore, like the majority of Americans in any poll since the election, isn't a fan of Trump, to say the least. His attack on the man here is concise and precise, reminding us of the President's long and creepy obsession with his elder daughter, providing evidence of his inappropriate and potentially illegal treatment of women and girls, and going so far as to put his words beneath film of one of Adolf Hitler's speeches.

That last one might seem extreme, but then again, the gestures and facial tics look a little familiar. Plus, Moore has a couple of experts on and an educational film strip about despotism, in order to frame Trump's words and actions within a context that strongly suggests, while the man may not literally be Hitler, he certainly has an affinity for and tendencies toward an authoritarian strongman.

Ultimately, though, the movie is not an all-out assault on Trump and all for which he stands (or pretends to, at least, depending on whom he's trying to court with his empty rhetoric). It's more akin to Moore using the idea of Trump, as well as the reality of his election and presidency, as a springboard for the filmmaker to touch upon the subjects he would rather highlight. Those include guns, grassroots political movements, candidates of the left-wing variety, and, naturally, his hometown of Flint, Michigan, which suffered a horrendous water-poisoning crisis because of the direct action of the state's governor, whom Moore sees as a precursor to Trump's electoral success.

The thesis is bluntly stated after a long montage of election night: "How the f--- did this happen?" Moore kind of answers the question, if one reads between the lines of his scattershot approach. The simple answer is that we, as a country, let it happen. Moore starts by naming some obvious culprits—a mainstream news media that loved the ratings and attention Trump brought, a class of political elites who were too comfortable to see the real concerns of Trump's eventual voters, a rival campaign team that didn't seem to truly believe in their candidate, and a decades-long tactical effort by the Democratic Party to embrace centrism instead of left-leaning political ideas.

If some of this sounds a bit like Trump's rhetoric, only from a different political perspective, Moore acknowledges that to a certain degree, too. The filmmaker has always presented himself as a populist, worried about the concerns of the poor and working class, and Trump campaigned with plenty of populist rhetoric. The difference, of course, is that we can believe Moore does care, given his decades-long career of bringing economic injustice to light, while Trump's populist cries are clearly phony.

We really have to believe Moore's sincerity for the final third of the movie, which highlights a number of Congressional candidates in the upcoming midterm election—all of them with little to no governmental experience, railing against the status quo of the current system, and appealing to the concerns of everyday people. Since Moore doesn't differentiate between legitimate and fake populism, the movie starts to sound like a simplistic argument: That guy and his cronies, talking about making life better for ordinary people, are bad, but my people, talking about making life better for ordinary people, are good.

I'm inclined to believe Moore and the candidates featured here, even though they're only afforded the opportunity to speak in platitudes. Maybe those who heard and believed Trump's hollow promises, only to figure out that they were about as real as one could expect from a reality TV star, will believe these candidates, too. As an argument for specific policies and ideas, though, the movie's campaign section comes up short.

Moore's political theater, usually clever and funny, is diminished here, in terms of both actual happenings and quality. There's a bit involving his attempt to make a citizen's arrest of Michigan governor Rick Snyder and, because such an event would never happen, the hosing of lead-saturated water from Flint on the property of the governor's mansion. As for Trump, the filmmaker doesn't bother, which seems like a great missed opportunity.

Moore might be losing his touch in terms of stunts, but at least he allows the people of Flint, the teenaged organizers of a worldwide anti-gun-violence event, and others to be heard. Their stories of pain turning into activism are hopeful, even as Moore himself seems to fall into anger and despair over Trump—after getting a few funny jabs out of the way. The unfocused Fahrenheit 11/9 mostly tells us that things are bad and could get worse, which seems unnecessary at this point.

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