Fahrenheit 9/11 when it was released twenty years ago, it created such a hornet’s nest, so much so that today it is hard to believe that this documentary, awarded with the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival presided over by Quentin Tarantino, really existed. One also wonders whether it had exclusively positive consequences and not also negative ones. Michael Moore that 25 June 2004 brought to the theater what is still today a real counterculture manifesto. It was not a simple civil and political satire documentary, but an act of resistance against the Bush Presidency, but even more so against the conservative front, which in those years would begin its metamorphosis, moving ever closer towards radical, not to say subversive, positions. Donald Trump himself, well or even is also a product of that historical moment, in which the Republican Party leads America towards bankruptcy War on Terror. Michael Moore had already established himself as one of the most original directors with documentaries such as The Party is Over, The Big One and that Bowling for Columbine which had had an unprecedented impact on American public opinion. But of course, no one could have imagined that by investigating the dirty laundry of the American administration, looking for the connections between the Bush family and the Bin Laden family, the very complicated plot that linked the United States to Saudi Arabia, Michael Moore would be able to create the last, true, great documentary of modern cinema.
Already from the title, connected to “Farenheit 451” Of BradburyMichael Moore made his point of view perfectly understood, in that 2004 where, still on the crest of the wave, George W. Bush had brought to the agenda not only the fight against Terror, but also great political authoritarianism and the infamous Patriot Act. Michael Moore, as usual, moves from top to bottom, weaves micro narrative with macro narrative, skillfully rather than transfiguring, he shows us the real face of power, of one of the most mediocre administrations in history. There is a head the son of a former Presidentthere is George who is immortalized in the moment in which, informed of the attacks on the Twin Towers, he appears completely lost, or cynically convinced of having to stay there, listening the story of a little duck on which then Leslie Nielsenwould have constructed one of his greatest parodies. Fahrenheit 9/11 still amazes today for its ability to broaden the vision, it doesn’t stop at wrongdoings of the Bush administration, to the total partiality of the investigations into the attacks, to the disinformation carried out by the media, which fuel a climate of terror that is as chaotic as it is useful for the Presidency to erase all internal and external opposition. Michael Moore with Fahrenheit 9/11 puts America as a society in the dock, always looking for an enemy to fightto avoid anyone perhaps asking themselves uncomfortable questions.
Fahrenheit 9/11 it was not free from defects, like the excess of romanticism and a director’s gaze that became all too present, the simplification of the international panorama. Yet, even today it is an unrivaled cinematic work for the semantic truth contained in it, for having enlightened America about social inequality, which necessarily also becomes inequality in the face of war. The children of the powerful never go there, it is the children of the people who die in Afghanistan and Iraq, the two disasters we inherited from Bush. Twenty years have passed, it seems like another era in which we were watching Colin Powell lie shamelessly in front of the United Nations, Condoleezza Rice, Donald RumsfeldThe Vice President Cheney and all the rest of that simply disastrous political class, cheerfully lead us towards the whirlpool of horror, errors and chaos for which we are all paying the price today. The leftmost side of Fahrenheit 9/11 however, it is in the moment in which it enlightens us on the same reality that Oliver Stone, with JFK before and W. then, he put it before our eyes: war is America’s biggest businessfor a certain America, that of the large conglomerates, of the large companies for which the disaster in the Middle East is an opportunity, including those where the Bushes and many others on the conservative front have shares, personal interests. Oilmen, financiers, banks, they are the dark mass behind every political front, adapting from time to time. Something that later also Adam McKay with Vice would have shown in detail.
Historical courses and recurrencesgood or bad you can’t help but think about Eisenhowerwhich put the American people on guard against the axis created between economic world and the executive power already in the early 1960s. Michael Moore enlightens us on the defeat of that prophecy, which he himself holds, while showing us the methods of recruiting sergeants who promise everything to the abandoned children of minority ghettos. They are the cannon fodder of the Bush Presidency, the one who proudly announces the victory in Iraq, and then make them sink into a hell of attacks, instability, bizarre theories. The banality of evil is an expression so overused today, yet in few films like it Fahrenheit 9/11 this formula is all the more suitable. Together here is the fear. And fear is perhaps the great underground theme of Moore’s film, fear is what held America together back thenis the instrument of power that Martin Scorsese also places on the men in charge. House of Cards he would have capitalized on all this by taking us into a world very similar to the one Moore showed us was real. But what is real? What is fictional? Perhaps the elections that allow Bush to win, explains Moore, the brother who with every trick hinders democracy to help him. The homeland of free men? They are no longer free, not if you are one of “the others”, and in 2004 this formula meant everyone and no one. Fear precisely. “If people are afraid,” says Moore, “controlling them is very easy.”
Fahrenheit 9/11 moves on that invisible line that separates the denial of the rhetoric of patriotism, the informative counterculture, with conspiracy theorists. Because, and this is another undeniable fact, Fahrenheit 9/11 had the merit of awakening consciences and telling us about the political truth about an era, but without wanting to, it contributed to a certain extent to that arsenal of fake news, lies, abstruse theories And denial of the truthwhich paradoxically the very right he hated is now contesting everywhere in the world. Fahrenheit 9/11 would have grossed $230 million, like no other documentary, would become a one-of-a-kind case. In his later works with Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore in TrumpLand, Fahrenheit 11/9. the director would continue with the same style, albeit with lesser results. Fahrenheit 9/11 it remains today a relic of a bygone era. THE social media didn’t exist yet, the world of the web was something present but superficial, the political left of which Michael Moore was an uncomfortable representative, has completely lost contact with reality. Yet, we would need another like him today, capable with a film made with many ideas and attributesto make them face their responsibilities, to make us understand that the democracy we believe in no longer exists.
The unmissable items for the man of style
I was born in Padua in 1985, always a great fan of sport, cinema and art. After twelve years as a professional coach and scout in the world of volleyball, I decided to pursue a career as a journalist.
Since 2016 I began to collaborate with various paper and online magazines, as a critic and correspondent at festivals such as Venice, Rome and Trieste Science Fiction.
I published with Viola Editrice “Cinema in the time of terror”, analysis of post-9/11 cinema. For Esquire I cover cinema, television and sport, in particular I am a great fan of football, boxing, volleyball and tennis.
By virtue of this passion I also maintain a personal in-depth page on Facebook, entitled L’Attimo Vincente.
I believe in the weight of words, in irony, in always being true to one’s opinion when writing and in never thinking of being infallible.
