Genre: Documentary
Directed: Michael Moore
Stars: Michael Moore
Production: Dog Eat Dog Films
Michael Moore has long been considered a liberal firebrand and polemic ever since he first dawned a dirty baseball cap and started taking a certain CEO to task. His most popular and critically acclaimed film Bowling for Columbine (2002) is a masters course in social documentary that has since been replicated by both the right and left. Regardless of what you think of the man and his politics, two things remain clear while watching all his documentaries; he has a strong point of view and he loves his country and his countrymen. In that regard, Where to Invade Next is more of the same only with less actual information.
The conceit of Where to Invade Next involves Michael Moore (again the subject of his own doc) traipsing from country to country in travelogue fashion while looking like a frog lost a fight to a dust bunny. His goal: to find new ideas from overseas that may be of use to Americans. He makes stops in mostly European countries including: Italy, Portugal, France, Norway, Iceland, Slovenia and Germany but lest you think his mentality is wholly euro-centric, he does make a stop in Tunisia to talk to participants of the Arab Spring. The audience is meant to share his shock when various participants tell Mr. Moore of their shorter work hours, healthy school lunches, lengthy vacation times, progressive treatment of women, criminals and drug abusers.
Moore has a gift for argumentum ad passiones choosing, among others a Tunisian revolutionary, a female Icelandic bank CEO and a bereaved Norwegian father to a mass shooting victim as his subjects. These moments are almost always juxtaposed with the American response to the similar problems these people have faced either to provide humor or to provide a woeful sense of embarrassment among American viewers. The most stunning juxtaposition was the treatment of American criminals in prison being tied down, beaten and mauled by dogs while Norwegian maximum security prisoners enjoy the creature comforts of a college dorm. Admittedly I was dumbfounded.
Yet the anecdotal approach to his documentary is a novelty that wears thin the more the film swerves and bends to match Mr. Moore's thesis. He has a knack for advertising and cheerleading his world view but he seems unwilling or unable to defend it, choosing instead to ignore and/or misrepresent those who would take him to task. In one stunningly misguided infographic, Moore compares the average taxes a French person would pay versus an average American with a roll of coins. I assume the coins represent the average since there are no actual numbers. Moore then stacks coins to represent payment of medical care, college tuition and other social programs Americans pay out of pocket while the French enjoy them as basic social services via the slightly higher taxes they pay. Why not add more detail to this infographic? Could it be the facts don't support his argument?
What's more likely the case is Moore has leaned so fully into his leftist persona that he doesn't feel the need to clarify, defend or expound on certain social complexities. Near the end of the film, Moore and a friend walk the length of a section of the Berlin Wall and compare the social ills that could be cured with left-leaning ideas with the chiseling of the Wall. "People keep saying it's not that simple; but it is, it is that simple," he says while confusing his nonsense with horse sense. In another scene, Moore evokes Germany's dark past with clips of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (1935) and preaches about learning and embracing all your history, even the ugly parts. He again juxtaposes with images of our own ugly history not realizing that the information he is presenting is so skewed it risks being in the same ballpark as badly written history textbooks.
The most poignant part of the movie was provided by a Portuguese police officer who explained Portugal's policy of decriminalizing all illicit drugs preferring treatment to incarceration. While parting, Moore asks him what he would like to say to the American people. He responds by saying "a good society believes in human dignity." It's those words that ultimately make me believe Moore, despite his ham-fisted attention grabbing, has his heart in the right place. Yet it is possible to further the cause of human dignity and social responsibility without resorting to obfuscation, misrepresentation and hyperbole. It seems Michael Moore may have forgotten that.
Final Grade: D-
Yet the anecdotal approach to his documentary is a novelty that wears thin the more the film swerves and bends to match Mr. Moore's thesis. He has a knack for advertising and cheerleading his world view but he seems unwilling or unable to defend it, choosing instead to ignore and/or misrepresent those who would take him to task. In one stunningly misguided infographic, Moore compares the average taxes a French person would pay versus an average American with a roll of coins. I assume the coins represent the average since there are no actual numbers. Moore then stacks coins to represent payment of medical care, college tuition and other social programs Americans pay out of pocket while the French enjoy them as basic social services via the slightly higher taxes they pay. Why not add more detail to this infographic? Could it be the facts don't support his argument?
What's more likely the case is Moore has leaned so fully into his leftist persona that he doesn't feel the need to clarify, defend or expound on certain social complexities. Near the end of the film, Moore and a friend walk the length of a section of the Berlin Wall and compare the social ills that could be cured with left-leaning ideas with the chiseling of the Wall. "People keep saying it's not that simple; but it is, it is that simple," he says while confusing his nonsense with horse sense. In another scene, Moore evokes Germany's dark past with clips of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (1935) and preaches about learning and embracing all your history, even the ugly parts. He again juxtaposes with images of our own ugly history not realizing that the information he is presenting is so skewed it risks being in the same ballpark as badly written history textbooks.
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| Thanksgiving was awesome, slaves were better off as slaves and women make the best housekeepers...the end. |
Final Grade: D-
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