On November 9th, 2016, at 2:29 am, Donald J. Trump declared victory in his bid for the presidency, leading filmmaker Michael Moore to kick off his new documentary by asking in blunt fashion, “How the fuck did this happen?” But a play-by-play of this endlessly fascinating campaign is not only what interests Moore. His concern lies more with what will happen two years later: the 2018 midterm elections.
The film premiered earlier two weeks ago at the Toronto International Film Festival, reportedly completed at the last minute. Much of what Moore conveys in his signature scattershot though rollicking fashion will be old news for most news junkies: that according to the New York Times on the eve of the election, Trump had a slim 15 percent chance of winning; 2016 was supposed to be the year of the woman; and even Fox News host Bill O’Reilly said the odds were three to one that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton would win. Moore mentions briefly Russian meddling and James Comey, as well as a litany of high-profile media figures hammering Clinton on her use of a private email server. All of these journalists subsequently fell from grace after sexual misconduct allegations came to light. (After recent reports regarding Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, it shouldn’t be surprising if Moore tweaks his film up to its September 21 release.)
Moore speculates that Trump was so alarmed that NBC was paying Gwen Stefani, of The Voice, more than him for his reality TV show, The Apprentice, that he made a fake announcement of his candidacy to grab the network’s attention. It backfired: NBC fired him for his statements about Mexican immigrants, yet he began attracting massive crowds at his rallies and constant cable news coverage. However, according to accounts in numerous Frontline reports, Trump had been considering a run for the White House for some time before his 2015 announcement.
Perhaps what’s perhaps more revelatory here is Moore coming clean about his Trump family connections. He appeared on Roseanne Barr’s late 1990s talk show with Trump, in which the repartee was more amicable than acrimonious, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, threw the New York opening night party for Moore’s documentary Sicko back in 2007. That film was released on home video by the company owned by Steve Bannon, who would later become Trump’s chief strategist.
The film picks up steam and has something new to offer, besides what one would find in social media feeds, when Moore proposes a precursor for the Trump administration: the 2010 election of Republican Governor Rick Snyder in Moore’s home state, Michigan. The filmmaker zeroes in on the city of Flint, where the construction of a new water pipeline, built by contributors to Snyder’s campaign, caused the city’s drinking water to be switched from a fresh water resource to the polluted Flint River. Not too long afterward, residents began developing skin rashes, and high levels of lead were detected. (For a more thorough portrait of how the city rapidly changed for the worse, check out Netflix’s miniseries Flint Town.)
This section leads to an ineffectual stunt that should have been left on the editing room floor: Moore drives up to the governor’s mansion to make a citizen’s arrest and douse the driveway with a truckload of water shipped from Flint. However, he’s more successful in diagnosing voters’ apathy and how that played a role in voter turnout in 2016, pointing to the fate of Senator Bernie Sanders. Though Sanders won a large share of Democratic primaries and caucuses, Clinton had more delegates from these states at the Democratic National Convention, thanks to the addition of super delegates in places such as West Virginia.
What may surprise viewers, and at least shakes up the focus on Trump, is the movie’s scalding look back on the Barack Obama administration. The 44th president does not come off well here, particularly his visit to Flint in 2016, when he took a sip of a tall glass of Flint water. Under closer examination, he pretends to sip and has another glass of water under the podium. Moore also calls him out for setting the stage for Trump: imprisoning whistleblowers, raising the number of mass deportations, and continuing the war in Afghanistan.
For those expecting humor mixed with condemnation, Moore delivers: in footage borrowed from Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, Trump’s voice is dubbed in for the Führer. This film is not the first to make the comparison between the current president and Adolf Hitler. Jason Stanley’s How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them is just one book that also takes this matter up.
Unlike many issue-oriented documentaries that offer a “Here’s how you can help” wrap-up during the closing credits, Moore devotes his concluding chapter to emerging political activists, many of whom have become prominent national figures, such as David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez, survivors of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida; New York congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; and from West Virginia, congressional candidate Richard Ojeda.
As a result, this film is a call to arms that will lure in the director’s fan base, independents, and the choir that needs reassurance. On that score, it succeeds. However, like most of Moore’s recent films, Fahrenheit 11/9 may have a short shelf life, depending on the outcome of the November 6 elections. For example, his 2015 Where to Invade Next now seems quaintly optimistic. Its proposed ideas for fundamental changes in American institutions (schools, the health care system) are now even more unlikely.
Still, Moore’s latest is fast-paced and breezy, though without the depth or revelations of the barrage of recent books; for example, Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen’s Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign. Nowadays, Moore has a lot of competition, so the best time to see this film is before the news cycle changes, which could be any minute now.
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