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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Pro and con reviews of "Fahrenheit 9/11" raise readers' temperatures.
Jun 24, 2004 | [Read Stephanie Zacharek's and Andrew O'Hehir's reviews of "Fahrenheit 9/11."]
Stephanie Zacharek takes umbrage at Michael Moore's effort not being sufficiently cerebral and "logical" and writes: "Still, the tradition, craft and standards of journalism have to count for something: Should we really be holding up cheap shots, inference and sloppy reporting as gateways to the truth?"
Well, no. But then Moore never claimed he was presenting a PBS special! In delivering a work such as this to theatergoers, one must take care to ensure a high entertainment quotient as well -- so as not to turn them off. This is what Moore has succeeded in doing: telling the story without boring his audience to tears.
Really great docu-movies are not highfalutin treatises in journalistic technique and phony issue "two-sidedness." They must also engage the viewer at the emotional level.
If I wanted highbrow journalism, I'd watch Bill Moyers on PBS.
-- Phil Stahl
I haven't yet seen "Fahrenheit 9/11," but I have seen Michael Moore's other films and am frankly bewildered by Stephanie Zacharek's assault on Moore's "faux" populism. Was the "Rabbit Lady" in "Roger & Me" a figure to be ridiculed? Perhaps the "limousine liberal" crowd that ran Moore out of town at Mother Jones thought she was simply comic relief, but I saw -- and I think Moore did, too -- a woman doing what she could with the meager resources at hand. Zacharek needs to consider to what degree she may be projecting her own cultural values on the images Moore presents.
Worse, chiding Moore over bringing home the violence of war is completely inexcusable. To criticize this during a war so aggressively sanitized that photos of coffins are verboten is completely out of touch with reality. The sad truth is that while the horror of war might be taken for granted in film critics' social circles, out here in middle America the suffering is a non-factor in what passes for thought about the war. Just this past week a letter writer in my local paper openly -- and sincerely -- advocated the indiscriminate use of automatic weapons to pacify Iraqi cities. People need a reminder of what that means.
-- John Caraher
