Background: "Fahrenheit 9/11"

I saw "Fahrenheit 9/11" at the Metreon in San Francisco on opening night. The screening itself had the feeling of a political rally, with a line hundreds of people long stretching from the second floor (where the movie was being screened) down a long flight of stairs to the first floor, a buzz of excited voices in the air, activists walking the line handing out literature as we waited eagerly. 

The tension continued to build when we got inside the theater, as we were subjected to a ton of ads, then a succession of trailers for cookie-cutter big-budget movies that never seemed to end, to the point where big boos went through the room when each new trailer started and we knew we had to wait longer for the movie we'd paid for to start. 

The Metreon, the multiplex to beat all multiplexes, was and is a hub of vulgar hyper-commercialization and lowest common denominator fare, so it was an odd fit for a somewhat radical political flick. The fact that Moore's movie was at the Metreon showed just how much money the owners expected to make from it, a hunch that would turn out to prove correct. "Fahrenheit" would go on to become the biggest-grossing documentary of all time, a distinction it still holds. 

The timing couldn't have been better for Michael Moore. He was a hot commodity as a filmmaker, as his previous movie ("Bowling for Columbine") had won an Oscar for best documentary and the subject matter of "Fahrenheit 9/11" (the awful and staggeringly corrupt presidency of George W. Bush) was very relevant in the U.S.--where a presidential election was scheduled in less than five months--and the rest of the civilized world, which couldn't wrap their collective heads around the stumblebum cowboy personality or unilateralist policies of W. The French, who had a particular disdain for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, awarded Moore with the Palm d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. 

My feature article was as much a fact check of the movie as a review. I generally liked Michael Moore, and felt like his heart was in the right place, but I found him to be sloppy at times in his thinking and presentation, favoring stunts and plays to audiences' emotions over sharp, objective political analysis of the kind other documentarians engaged in. For better or worse, "Fahrenheit" exhibited Moore's usual characteristics and techniques, but ultimately I had to give him credit for bringing vitally important topics--the theft of the 2000 election, Bush's failure to heed pre-9/11 intelligence warnings, Bush's protection of the Saudis, the lies that took us into Iraq--to a mainstream audience who had been shielded from this information by a gutless mainstream media. GOP shenanigans in Ohio and irrational fears of terrorism helped Bush gain a second term, but never have I seen a film director put forth such a monumental effort to sway a presidential election toward the side of right.