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By turning up the heat with Fahrenheit 9/11 Michael Moore has given documentary films a new sheen, writes Saibal Chatterjee
And now comes the news that Fahrenheit 9/11 could well be in the running for a Best Picture Academy Award, and not a mere Best Documentary Film Oscar. If the film were, indeed nominated for the top prize, it would be an honour that no non-fiction film has ever received in the long history of the Oscars. But really, nothing that Moore does, or achieves, surprises anybody anymore. His admirers swear by his spunk. His detractors poke fun at him for what they dismiss as attempts to tilt at windmills or serve up lopsided propaganda in the name of investigation. But Moore goes on regardless, taking the brickbats in his stride with the very insouciance that he brings to bear upon his relentless, blistering attacks on callous business corporations, cynical right-wing politicians and other sources of ills that plague the US. His book, Stupid White Men.....and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation, was number one on the New York Times non-fiction list in 2002. Like his films, the book spells out his views about America. While praising Americans as individuals, Moore is quoted as proclaiming: "What I am not satisfied with America is that the nation cannot control the government and economy. Only a handful of people have the power to control the country." Men in power, Moore believes, are clinically cold when it comes to assessing the human cost of their moves. He has made no bones about what he thinks of such people. Moore made his intentions as a filmmaker clear way back in the late 1980s when he sprung his first film, Roger & Me, on the world, raising money for its production by organising bingo games in his house. Roger & Me was a satirical documentary about the lockout of the General Motors plants in his hometown – Flint, Michigan – in the mid 1980s. The decision led to as many as 33,000 layoffs and left the once booming town in complete disarray. The film, which centred on Moore’s persistent attempts to buttonhole GM’s elusive head honcho Roger Smith for an interview, unravelled a tragedy that was all the more galling because it was Flint that gave birth to General Motors in the post-WW II boom of the 1950s. When Fahrenheit 9/11, a searing denunciation of US President George W. Bush’s handling of the ongoing war on terror, won the nod of Cannes’ main competition jury headed by cult director Quentin Tarantino, it provided documentary filmmakers across the globe an enormous fillip. It proved that a part of the world has probably changed for the better. Isn’t that what combative filmmakers of Moore’s ilk set out to do in the first place? Fahrenheit 9/11 made a bit of Cannes history. As Moore tore into Bush’s attempts to reshape history — and, if the filmmaker is to be believed, to bolster his family’s bank balance — in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, New York, his film became the first documentary to win the Palme d’Or since 1956. Moore, of course, was no stranger to Cannes. He had won a Special Jury Prize at the world’s premier film festival two years ago for his hard-hitting anti-gun lobby cinematic tract, Bowling for Columbine. He earned notoriety when, in his Oscar acceptance speech the following year, he trained his gun on the President and the Iraq War. The day after, attendance for Bowling for Columbine shot up 110 per cent. The following weekend, it registered a 75 per cent jump in admissions. Indeed, Moore is acutely aware of the virtues of a healthy controversy. So he did not miss the political significance of the clearly unexpected Fahrenheit 9/11 triumphs in Cannes and at the US box office. In Cannes, he went out of his way to thank the French in his post-ceremony press conference for resisting the war in Iraq. "The French are our friends. Without the French there might not have been a United States of America. The French helped us in our revolution. The statue that graces our harbour in New York City was a gift from the French people to celebrate our liberty." Since the film’s commercial release in the US, Moore has deliberately kept stirring the pot by taking on his right-wing critics, when not making statements about his undisguised hatred for Bush. "My real Oscar will be Bush’s defeat on November 2," he told an American news agency recently. His announcement that he is not interested in the Best Documentary Oscar race, too, is believed to be a part of his campaign to stay in the headlines until his avowed purpose is served. That begs the question: Is Fahrenheit 9/11 more agitprop than art? It probably is, but that should not be held against the film. The world is passing through particularly troubled times and no filmmaker worth his salt – we are obviously not talking Bollywood’s repackaging artists or Hollywood’s CGI-obsessed movie moguls here – can afford to turn a blind eye to the disasters waiting to explode around us. Therein lies the importance of being Michael Moore. |
With
former journalist and filmmaker Michael Moore, surprises never cease. In
May this year, his two-hour-long documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11,
won the Palme d’Or at the 57th Cannes Film Festival. That achievement
was topped by the film’s unprecedented US box office success – it
zoomed right to the top of the charts, toppling many mainstream
potboilers on the way.