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SICKO
Written & Directed by Michael Moore.
Produced by: Moore & Meghan O’ Hara.
Edited by Dan Swietik, Geoffrey Richman & Christopher Seward.
Released by Genius Products/The Weinstein Company.
Country: USA. 123 min. PG-13.
DVD Features: Featurettes – Sicko Goes to Washington; This Country Beats France; Uniquely American; What if You Worked for G.E. in France?; Sister Mary Fidel; Who Would Jesus Deny?; More With Mike & Tony Benn; A Different Kind of Hollywood Premiere; "Alone Without You" music video performed by the Nightwatchman. Interview gallery. Trailer. English & Spanish subtitles.

Nearly 50 million uninsured Americans. These are about the first words out of director Michael Moore’s mouth in Sicko, his new documentary on the U.S. health care system. This film is not about the uninsured though. His film is, rather, about insured Americans and what privatized insurance costs them. It is a scathing look at the cultural practice of the privatized system, its bankrupting effect on the middle and lower classes, as well as a tongue-in-cheek examination of the benefits of universal health care. This is Moore’s best film to date, his first that has the potential to influence viewers, instead of polarizing an already polarized audience.

The film is symptomatic of what the Michael Moore documentary has become, only in Sicko his style feels like it has finally found a home. His emotionally-charged documentaries are not known for being unbiased statistical accounts of modern politics. Emotionally driven, they attempt (beginning with Roger & Me) to reveal the personal impact emblematic of the socio-political flaws of modern America.

Moore travels throughout the country interviewing lives that have been destroyed: an older couple, whose unmanageable prescription costs have forced them to move into their daughter’s storage room, and an LA woman, whose daughter died because a hospital wouldn’t accept her health insurance. These and more stories are powerful and horrifying.

Moore’s well-publicized trip to Cuba may be the most striking of part of the film, where volunteer 9/11 rescuers receive unconditional full-medical treatment that they could not afford back home. These are the signature scenes in a Moore documentary; heartfelt, intentionally controversial, well intended if not logically flawed. He assumes, too often, that his point is self evident. His methods never account for variables that don’t support his thesis, like what would happen if health care was taken out of the hands of the private sector – the possibility of thousands of lost jobs, or a plunge in the stock market, and so on. Moore hurts his cause by not fully analyzing the consequences of such action.

Ultimately, however, Sicko works. It’s sound, disturbing, and invigorating, though I was left with the feeling that the European health care utopia Moore describes can’t be that good, as though something was omitted. Sicko’s far from perfect, but if nothing else, it touches a nerve.

DVD Extras: The supplemental material, though somewhat sterile, fits into the film’s tone. But particularly enlightening are extended versions of interviews with Che Guevara’s daughter, Dr. Aleida Guevara, and veteran British Parliament Member Tony Benn. They veer off from much of the film’s rhetoric and give a broader idea of where they stand. Other interviews include a Harvard professor, a nun in Cuba, and a G.E. worker in France, all of which add more of the same to a film that alludes to an endless cache of personal horror stories. And one featurette, in particular, highlights the battle in congress for H.R. 676, the universal health care bill, encouraging viewers to contact their representatives and use the film as a starting point for actual action. Dustin L. Nelson
November 6, 2007