Static Zombie

You've seen it?

I'll just register my dissenting vote on that one: I think the Canne Jury was on Freedom Fries.

You've seen it... and you've seen the other films at the Cannes festival? It was of course judged best of that festival.

I saw it last night.

My further comments have been edited into the original post.

Well, I'm going to see it on Friday with the rest of the shlubs who don't have industry-insider connections. (Apologies for the last post, had I thought about it, I'd have realized how you saw it early.)

Out of curiosity, what did you think of Roger & Me or Bowling for Columbine? Michael Moore the person can definitely engender intense reactions, but my understanding was that he's in this movie less than the others. And of course, less Moore is more.

I haven't seen Bowling for Columbine. I recall liking Roger & Me, although my memory of it is a bit fuzzy.

This was masterful blogging Peter. The “The Cannes jury was on crack.” teaser trailer grabbed our attention, but didn’t ruin it for us (had he actually seen it?) Then once the pre-review buzz reached a fever pitch (3 comments) you unveiled the whole review. Bravo. ;)

why did you wait so long to register to vote?

PBS, NPR and other left-leaning media outlets bend over backwards to include all the facts.

With Rush and Fox, we need more Moore.

I'll take a supersized Frankenfied take on the subject to go.

Do you want to borrow my copy of Bowling for Columbine?

Being a leftist industry insider myself, and having seen the film, I must admit was sort of amazed by how little content was actually in the film. Let me restate that - after two plus hours there was a lot left to tell. And being one who actually enjoys (most) of Moore's style of filmmaking I could have happily sat through another two hours of the missing information. Maybe they'll pull a "LOTR" on the dvd release.

I'm one of those people who feels that my vote, as an individual, doesn't matter. I understand that individual votes in the aggregate are what decide an election, but no one of those votes in and of itself is significant. Therefore, my vote isn't significant. So why bother?

The fact that I've registered to vote doesn't mean I've changed my opinion. My vote still doesn't matter... to anyone but me. Ultimately, I'm voting in this election simply because I feel the need to make a statement, even if it's a statement nobody else will hear. It's not about participating in the Great Democratic Process. It's about being sufficiently ticked off at the guy in the Oval Office to overcome my cynicism and ennui. Voting happens to be one of the least inconvenient ways of venting that emotion.

I realize that cozying up to the Roger Eberts and Elvis Mitchells of the world was probably not your main concern, but I'm afraid the pros aren't backing you on this one.
It gets 81% on the Tomatometer

I think Peter understands what Moore understands: controversy begets publicity. I saw the film again last night and I think much of this review is accurate. The film stays with the woman from Flint for far too long. But the point of the segment isn't that a losing a loved one sucks, just as the whole movie isn't about what a lot of critics claim - that war is hell. The segment is about watching a regular person learn (the hard way) to question the motives of those in charge of her country. The segment absolutely needs to be in there, but it should be given less time. I think Moore must have been in love with it because he hit a bullseye by interviewing her *before* her son died, which has to be highly improbable regardless of the number of Americans who continue to die in Iraq.

See, it's like I've said all along-- life will go much easier for you if you just accept that I'm always right.

First off, this is a documentary. There are no actors reading scripted parts, and it "documents" a real person's opinion as to what is going on in the world around him. If it doesn't fit a preconceived notion of a Ken Burns/Discovery Channel documentary, that problem lies in the viewer's perception, not in Moore's presentation. This is more than just a semantic quibble, as much of the dismissive vitriol directed against it is turning on this exact point.

And Lila, the soldier's mom, was necessary. There are undoubtedly interviews with numerous other Flint residents on the cutting room floor. Moore needed someone to focus on as a single "human face" character. Through the tragedy of losing her son during the course of filming, Lila has to be Moore's inevitable choice to fill that role.

The film is filled with disturbing images. (Surprisingly, I find myself agreeing with the MPAA to uphold their R rating, as much as I would like younger people to be exposed to this antidote to the network and cable news rah rah reporting.) Michael Moore is out to make people uncomfortable with what is going on, and images of Saudi beheadings, American soldier amputees, and napalmed Iraqis are discomforting. But maybe even more so is the intense focus on someone else's grief. To be effective, though, this needs time to be developed. So the extended screen time Lila gets is appropriate and, in my opinion, not a misstep.

The movie has its problems. Moore often goes for, and admittedly gets, the cheap laugh. Until the last parts, when it does get a focus, it seems very scattershot, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink. On the other hand, I agree with Nate that there was a lot more that could be said, and it almost felt incomplete to me. Ultimately, it can't be the last word, since the conflict is ongoing. Its very topicality to the here and now may keep it from being perceived as a great or even very good film in the long-term. Still, it's a fascinating snapshot of a very specific place (Michael Moore's mind) at a very specific time.

Peter: You and I disagree on a lot of things, but I'd venture to say now: none so much as this movie. (Unless it's whether your vote "counts.")

This movie affected me viscerally, so much so that I dropped plans to do political (register to vote) work afterwards because I just didn't want to talk to people after seeing it. The effect that this movie had on me, and from reviews and awards I would venture to say other people too, was greater than any movie I've seen in quite a while.

I realize the childless in this group will feel like I'm playing the "parent card," but it may have something to do with the parent-losing-child scenes in the movie, both in Flint and in Iraq. That is something that now horrifies me in a way I can't really describe. Or maybe it's that I rarely if ever get my news from TV (Daily Show excepted), so I had not really seen some of the carnage depicted. But I'd say it's most likely the final, and in my opinion strongest, point of the movie: that the men and women killing and dying for us are by and large from the working class, and that we should (but don't) treat their sacrifice with the respect it deserves.

I wouldn't claim that this is my favorite movie of all time, but then again, neither is Schindler's List, but I can't deny its power or the fact that it is a very well-made movie.

And there are certainly things I'd have done differently: I think he should have spent some time making it clear that Saddam Hussein's rule was a brutal dictatorship; I don't think that lessens the impact of the message at all. And the implications of the scenes with top US government officials meeting with men dressed in traditional Arab garb hinted at racism, IMO. He could have spent more time differentiating between the Saudi Royal Family (itself a dictatorship) and the Saudi people.

But to the original point: I agree with Mark that, my personal feelings aside, this is a fascinating movie. As I mentioned earlier, I've not seen the other Cannes movies, but I have no trouble believing it was deserving of the Palm d'Ore.

Those of you who've not seen this movie should.

[Aside to Nate: I'm not convinced that the early Lila scenes were filmed before the news of her son's death. Honestly, I don't know either way, but I could certainly imagine that he filmed her in different moods at different times, and edited the film to achieve the effect he sought.]

You call it powerful, I call it simpleminded and obvious. Parents lose children in EVERY war. Throwing that in the audience's face is facile. I think we can all agree that war is bad. The real question Moore should have been addressing is why THIS war in particular is bad. The graphic scenes were just gratuitous and a classic's magician's trick of misdirection. Focus on the horrible images over here, so you don't ask the questions I'm not prepared to answer over there. But it's precisely those questions that Moore needed to answer to support his position and, at least in my case, win over the viewer. Instead, I left the theater feeling on the one hand insulted and on the other hand skeptical about how much of Moore's indictment really holds water.

Of the two of us, you're by far the more politically savvy. So it surprises me that Moore's carnival theatrics won you over so completely, with so little apparent skepticism of the veracity of his facts or his interpretation of them.

Saw it yesterday. While I was a little underwhelmed at parts, I don't put a lot of stock in much of the criticisms leveled at this piece. We've had characters like Rush Limbaugh lampooning the left wing for years, and this is just a similar polemic coming back from the other side. Except that it is better researched and more grounded in fact than much of the talk radio blather, probably because they need to fill so much air time.
I absolutely disagree that the scenes of the war, or of Lila were overblown, or unneccessary in any way. Personally I was more put off by some of the personal attacks (like all the make-up shots, which would be available of most anyone who does work in front of a camera), I thought the little "stunts" like confronting Congressmen asking them to recruit their kids for Iraq were similarly distracting from the point.
I also was very disappointed by his coverage of the Patriot Act. He spent more time on how it got passed than on what it means. A few images or stories to demonstrate the problems it presents would have gone a long way here.
During Vietnam there were protest songs that helped both reflect and shape public opinion. Have we entered the era of the protest movie?

I think it is less that she lost her child to war but that she lost her child to a war without any broader underlying principles, rationale, or benefit. I think, if nothing else, he did make the point that this war is different from most other wars in that plans were drawn up before there was a reason to go to war and some supposition that it might have been personal, because of the attempt on Bush Sr’s life.

It is harder to answer why this war in particular is so bad because Saddam was/is a "bad guy." However, unless US foreign policy is to go after all bad guys, whether in Rwanda, Iraq, or North Korea, I think the movie gets at how this war is different from most other wars.

Some have critiqued Moore's buffoonery, but in retrospect, I think it keeps the movie from becoming maudlin. At the same time, I’d bet Moore avoids going into details about the Patriot Act because it raises the question of whether certain parts of it are legitimate, an area Moore does not want to go.

No, it is not Triumph of the Will, but it has shifted the discourse to forcing those in favor of the war to verbalize why American lives should be lost in Iraq. Even if you support Bush and the war in Iraq, it forces you to consider whether or not you are willing to lose your children to be the world’s unilateral police force in a world with more “bad guys” out there.

Of the two of us, you're by far the more politically savvy. So it surprises me that Moore's carnival theatrics won you over so completely, with so little apparent skepticism of the veracity of his facts or his interpretation of them.

I wasn't very skeptical because there was little if anything in this movie I'd not read before. Add to that the fact that he had hired an impressive outside fact-checking team and had edited out parts of the movie that couldn't be substantially verified, and I figured I could give him the benefit of the doubt on anything factual.

As for his interpretation of the facts, I took that for his interpretation. I don't believe that either Bush Sr or Jr is selling top secret documents to the Saudis, but I do think there's a well-documented relationship that needs to be examined. What does a pre-presidential George W Bush or a post-presidential George H W Bush bring to the board of an international arms/oil company, if not access to the White House? And Moore didn't even bring up stuff like Bob Woodward's insistence that the Saudis were told about the final decision to invade Iraq before Sec'y of State Colin Powell was.

You call it powerful, I call it simpleminded and obvious. Parents lose children in EVERY war. ... The real question Moore should have been addressing is why THIS war in particular is bad.

I really don't know what you were looking for in this movie. Is a documentary about the Holocaust "facile" because it shows images from Auschwitz? Is it required that filmmakers who create a documentary about the genocide in Rwanda present evidence that it was worse than Stalin's purges?

The genesis of this thread was the question of whether the Cannes jury was "on crack" or whether they'd picked what could easily have been the best film of the festival. I still contend that Moore effectively used standard documentary techniques (facts, interviews, unedited shots of people falling apart emotionally) as well as non-standard techniques (parody, absurdist interviews and "stunts") to make his case. That case being, I would argue, not "war is bad" or even "this war is bad", but - as I said before - that the men and women killing and dying for us are by and large from the working class, and that we should (but don't) treat their sacrifice with the respect it deserves.