Just a few comments on Rosenbaum and documentaries
I'm glad you and your guru Rosenbaum liked Moore's movie, Oscar -- I agree that you, like I, would have a hard time not doing so, given our politics. It's always interesting to see what the sage of Chicago has to say if only because so many film buffs swear by his words. However from my viewpoint his as usual dry, rather stilted style seems like kind of a funny way to get at what Moore's doing. You'd hardly guess he's describing the blunt populist from Flint and not Kiarostami or Hou Hsiau Hsien. Good point about the treatment of the World Trade Center bombings, though: it is a subtle approach. Some of Moore's editing isn't at all subtle, but that passage certainly is. I wish Rosenbaum had listed the "current popular documentaries" that have "scored at the box office precisely because they help fill in the enormous gaps created by our depleted and corrupted TV culture." I'm not sure what he's referring to other than this and Control Room. Typical self righteous tone: do we have to be told this about our "TV culture"? I hardly think so.
Interesting that Rosenbaum says "Objectivity in a documentary (or a film review) is not only impossible but undesirable." David Denby (whom film buffs abhor, I take it) says just the opposite in his very harsh treatment of the second half of Farenheit 9/11. Not that I agree with Denby, but this remark of Rosenbaum's (joining the Moore camp in makiing it) doesn't add a whole lot to the discussion, because obviously there are documentaries that take a very neutral stance, and Moore is an extreme example of the other approach -- hardly the only desirable method. It's not true that Farenheit 9/11 is the ideal or typical kind of documentary; it's a very special one, arguably not even a documentary but an empassioned argument.
Denby cites Jarecki of Capturing the Friedmans as the kind of neutral documentary people should make and calls Jarecki one of the "great" documentarians of today. That's ridiculous in my view: Capturing the Friedmans isn't brilliant, just lucky, much like Noujaim of Control Room, a matter of lucky timing and serendipity. In that sense Moore's Farenheit 9/11 emerges as a powerful piece of work because he has shaped his material so consciously and, yes, it is good to know what a documentarian's biases are, up front. But one thinks of To Be and To Have, the French documentary about a schoolroom, where the filmmakers are completely recessive and that, too, is clearly a wonderful and -- in a very different way -- a very appropriately constructed and shaped documentary. Perhaps it's obvious they believe the teacher and his classroom are worthy of our worshipful attention and that is a position, but it's never overtly stated and is hardly partisan.
There is a lot of stuff, including the black congresspeople's failed attempt to protest the ruined election and disenfranchised minority voters, that is new to us in the movie. But if this is the substance of Rosenbaum's description of it, he (not untypically, again) fails to note the essential power of it which lies in two things, mainly: first in the coherent chronological narrative that Moore constructs for us, which constitutes a sequence that's almost unbearable to see all connected together; and second, on another, non-verbal, non-logical level, in the images, in Bush's facial expressions, and those of the other adminstration clique members shown in TV outtakes, whose utterly damning message requires no explication by the narrator whatsoever.
Replies to ANDURIL: a protest
It's unfortunate that this thread has been dominated by Anduril. This is much the same thing that happened with a lengthy thread about Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ, which I believe he liked. He went to see it. I did not like it, but I went to see it the first night, with an open mind.
This is a film website. It exists for the discussion of films. This thread has been commandeered for a political debate. Now, sure, Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11 is political -- and passionately partisan. But if this is really FilmWurld we're here to talk about a movie. And whether you are "familiar with most of the facts" contained in it or whatever, you're not qualified to talk about the movie unless you've seen it.
The thread has also been derailed into a narrower discussion than the issues dealt with in Moore's movie. Anduril's eight points are justifications for the US invasion of Iraq (or at least he thinks they are), but Moore's movie is an indictment of the US government's response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 or, to put it another way more germane to Moore's outlook, the policies the Bush administration has used 9/11 as an excuse for carrying out. Along the way, Moore is saying, obviously, that Bush and his family and his administration have shown themselves not only biased but incompetent and dangerous.
Some of Anduril's statements have been interesting, and they've stimulated lively responses from Johann, Raoul, and several others (unfortunately, not many others). I find it interesting that because Anduril thinks the war was justified he therefore thinks Bush's incompetence is irrelevant. I don't think the issues Anduril brings up have much to do with Moore's movie directly. He isn't addressing Moore's points; he's addressing the general idea that the invasion of Iraq was unjustified, which he seeks to refute. That's a general idea; but Moore's movie deals with a much wider spectrum of issues. It's also a movie, not a text, and it must be dealt with as a movie, and not as a series of facts or claims or arguments.
I'm sorry that Johann doesn't even bother to reply to the intricate and convoluted series of points Anduril included in his #8 point in favor of the invasion of Iraq. Some of Anduril's arguments are fairly conventional. But at times, here, he really goes off on his own:
Quote:
the instability in Iraq has meant that terrorists, who might otherwise attack civilians in the United States, are engaged in conflict with soldiers there. Many analysts are quick to point out that the Islamic militants have come flying out of the woodwork in Iraq but few have realized that this means they are not in the United States attacking civilians.” The United States has effectively opened a front for its war against terrorism. This front contributes considerably to the safety of the world.
"Few have realized...." Few indeed. This is one of the more inspired examples of doublethink I've ever seen. But ingenious though it is, I doubt it would gain much currency on the rightest of right wing websites.
But to get back to my point: none of this is a critique of Moore's Farenheit 9/11, which Anduril has not seen. Whether he avoids seeing it out of fear, out of a desire not to "aid" the "causes" Moore stands for, or because (although he can spend hours participating in this thread) he is too busy working on his thesis to go out to a movie -- movies are a waste of his valuable time -- I have to protest against the lengthy commandeering of this website for partisan, non-cinematic uses.
I didn't mind dropping $10 into Mel Gibson's treasury, no matter how pernicious I found his film: I'm here to discuss films. And you've got to see 'em to talk about 'em.
Re: Replies to ANDURIL: a protest
Quote:
Originally posted by Chris Knipp
It's unfortunate that this thread has been dominated by Anduril. This is much the same thing that happened with a lengthy thread about Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ, which I believe he liked. He went to see it. I did not like it, but I went to see it the first night, with an open mind.
Well, I'll come to Anduril's defense on this one. He wrote at length about the faults in "Passion of the Christ", and he led a healthy debate against a person here called MickeyMoose who was a strong proponent of the film. Anduril, a person with an extensive background in biblical studies, found the film to be more in line with a traditional passion play (historically anti-semitic) than a true interpretation of the Bible. I hate to be speaking for him here, but I don't think he would argue with that description. I, for one, learned alot from Anduril's postings about that film.
Of course, I agree one should see "Fahrenheit 9/11" before really delving into its subject matter. As has been mentioned before here, the images in the film are its strong point. We live in an image dominated soceity, and control of images and information is something that the Bush Administration has mastered. Now, Moore comes along and presents other images, ones that aren't nearly as flattering to the Administration. I applaud that.
I also find somewhat perplexing Anduril's statement about the "new front" on terrorism in Iraq making the U.S. safer. This argument about movements of concentrations of terrorists might be a bit more applicable, if at all, to Israel. Possibly the suicide bombers (or "suiciders" as Bush calls them) may shift their focus to Iraq, but I don't think there would be any effect on the U.S. directly.
