Mike and I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 last night. It's a good thing we bought tickets online a week ago: when we got to the theater at 5:45 four of the five evening showings were sold out. Seats were still available for the 11:30pm showing.
What an incredible movie, for the strong emotions it evokes. I'll be honest and say that I didn't think the first half hour (or so) was all that good. Moore tried to cover everything: funding of Dubya's oil company by a member of the Bin Laden family, questionable Harken Energy stock transactions, ties to the Saudi royal family, the Carlyle Group, etc. etc. He touched on all this stuff, and maybe people in the audience who haven't heard of this stuff before will be shocked by it, but I thought it made Moore sound a bit too much like a paranoid conspiracy theorist.
But the movie got better and better. Watching Bush just sit there after being told that America was under attack was amazing. Anybody who sees that scene has to realize how clueless he was. He wasn't just taking a few extra minutes so as not to frighten the children; he was waiting for someone to tell him what to do.
I was stunned by the scenes of the war in Iraq--dead children, crying parents, frightened civilians, and American soldiers listening to that awful music as Baghdad burned. It was particularly effective that the subtitles translated "Allah" as "God". It makes the viewer realize in a way he/she might not have before that we all call on the same God. And then the clip of Rumsfeld talking about the "humanity" of the attacks. I was enraged at Rumsfeld; what a bastard. What a bastard.
There were some great laughs, too. The audience we were part of loved it--we all laughed and applauded quite a few times. The use of humor was very, very effective, because it made the whole movie watchable. Ashcroft losing to a dead candidate, lol.
Most difficult to watch: the mother who lost her son. I felt so much pain, hearing her cry. Before he died she had described her family and other families like hers as "the backbone of America." Indeed. And when I saw her bent over under the weight of her grief as she stood in front of the Whitehouse, I thought, Bush, damn you, you've broken the backbone of America.
The scene of the soldiers right after the mine wnet off- screaming for help- that was hard to watch.
nice blog
I felt similar to what you describe.
I remember at the start thinking, "go easy on me Moore, I'm about to snap anyway." Once it was over, I didn't sense that Moore spared me much (except some BBC info); hoever, I did feel that he did a masterful job of making me want to take constructive action.