It’s difficult to believe that it’s been only two years since Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. (It’s difficult to believe that that is a factual sentence that exists in the English language.) The title of Michael Moore’s latest righteous broadside, Fahrenheit 11/9, refers to the day after the 2016 presidential election, the morning on which the world woke up, learned the election result (which was not clear until the wee hours), and cried — to quote Moore — “How the fuck did this happen?”
Moore’s look back at election night feels like a punch in the stomach, but that’s hardly Moore’s fault: the depths to which America has descended should make us sick. But Moore (Michael Moore in TrumpLand, Where to Invade Next) is only just getting started: as he lays out in his usual rowdy terms how Trump is but a symptom of the political rot in America, the beginning of the endgame of the decades-long neoliberal takeover of the country, the filmmaker is very adept at engaging our rage. (Moore shows us how the appalling nonsense of 2016 election was not limited to Republicans, or entirely attributable to Russia, either, and he doles out hearty fuck-yous to Obama and Clinton, too. Nothing here is partisan. It is simply sanity and reality.) Getting us angry is not a difficult task, but as Moore carefully assembles plenty of crap that anyone paying attention is already all too familiar with — like the disaster capitalism of the wholly artificial water crisis in Flint, Michigan, Moore’s hometown — he also digs up crap that we haven’t seen before to illustrate just how entrenched the rot is: his behind-the-scenes experience of an appearance with Trump on a 1998 episode of Roseanne Barr’s TV talk show demonstrates how opposition gets stifled in mainstream discourse and how the media soft-pedals monsters such as Trump and renders them as reasonable.
If you’re not already drained by the past two years, 11/9 will only add to your upset and exhaustion. Still, there is a little bit of hope to be found here… but only if we heed to the call to (metaphorical) arms that Moore raises. He trumpets the work of the teen survivors of the Parkland school shooting, and the aggressive anti-gun protests they’ve led. He reminds us of the general strike that teachers in West Virginia engaged in over the appalling meanness of their pay, and how that action spread to other states. Dissent is happening across America, and change is being pushed for. But is it enough? Is it too late already?
Perhaps Moore’s biggest coup here is getting on camera the last surviving Nuremberg prosecutor — 99-year-old Ben Ferencz — to tell us how he’s scared as hell at what’s going on in the US. Ferencz’s horror is horrifying. But so is the evidence of our own eyes: Every day since I saw this film a couple of weeks ago brings more actions and more words on Trump’s part that make it extremely hard to see that he isn’t deliberately engineering a slide into despotism, and that it isn’t accelerating. I wish I saw an end to it in sight.
viewed during the 62nd BFI London Film Festival
I don’t watch TV news anymore because I can’t stand the sound of Trump’s voice or his facial expressions so there’s no way I’m watching this but I do appreciate the effort.
I know how you feel. Listening to Trump speak is like getting punched in the face.
Damn Gwen Stefani!
????
There are people who hate No Doubt that much?!
You need to see the film to understand how how Gwen Stefani figures in the fall of American civilization, as theorized by Michael Moore.
You mean Gwen Stefani sold subprime mortgages too?!!
Who knew?
very few people left who actually speak up. Michael is one of them.
Trump makes me sick to my stomach, and while my politics align with Moore, I can’t stand him either (and he comes off as far too pessimistic). We played this for three weeks at our local theater and it didn’t gain much traction here in a liberal college town.
A lot of the complaints about this movie is how scattershot it is and how Moore throws crap out to see if it works. I get the message of “get mad enough to take action” but if it’s not focused… it makes it less powerful.
It would have been nice if, say, other filmmakers made that more focused plan of what to do. Michael Moore can’t do everything.
Moore is a leftwing fear monger just like Bill Maher. They spout a lot of crazy nonsense — a few of it comes true but that’s mostly them slinging spaghetti at the wall.
“Fear mongering?” Or being great at advocating for a position you and others believe in? Moore is excellent at that.
Moore is too left for me. I find him obnoxious and his Michigan “I told you so” schtick is smarmy as hell.
That’s fine. I’m sure Moore can live with both of our opinions.
Watched it when it came out, now, barely a month before the election with Trump in the hospital, maybe sick (maybe not), it doesn’t matter. If he lives or dies, because the damage down and the faithful will keep him around forever. But he should be out of the White House.