the chutry experiment

Immediately after the opening credits, the film fades to black for nearly a minute while we hear the familiar sounds of the towers hit. Finally, after nearly a minute, the image fades in and we see the immediate aftermath of people running, people crying and hugging, and paper floating in the air. We see very little of the actual violence of 9/11, a decision I think could be read in various ways. It might be seen as an attempt to respect the memory of the dead. It might be an acknowledgement that this violence is unrepresentable, but given Moore's eventual treatment of the Bush-Bin Laden family connections, it does show some restraint.

This sequence is followed by the now-famous video of Bush reading the children's book for seven minutes after the second tower was hit. The voice-over felt a little pushy here as Moore attempted to introduce some of his theses about Bush's connections with the Bin Laden family and the negligent treatment of intelligence regarding terrorism. Instead of Moore trying to score cheap points here, I have to wonder how this sequence could have played without Moore's voice-over, just seven minutes of real-time footage of Bush sitting there during the terrorist attacks. I'm not sure that it would have played better, but it would have been devastating.

The section of the film that treats the Bush-Bin Laden connection is mercifully fairly brief, and I don't think Moore ever directly states that Bush is culpable for the 9/11 attacks as some critics have implied--the film is more subtle than that. That always struck me as being a fairly thin thread to support a 90-minute feature film, but the sequence does convey the extent to which the Bush family (and many of his cronies) stand to profit from war, an ongoing theme throughout the film. It also allows Moore to re-frame some of the allegations that have often been levied against the Bush administration about their failure to pursue Bin Laden. Nothing new here, really, but it's done in an entertaining way, and it helps to frame some of the arguments about social class that Moore makes later in the film.

Moore carefully avoids showing any footage of the war on terror as it has been pursued in Afghanistan, which allows the tragic footage from Iraq to have a more powerful effect on the film's viewers (but, as A.O. Scott observes, it also brings Moore's stance on Afghanistan into question). These images are almost impossible to watch, with some of them as visceral as any war footage I've ever seen. Shots of a wounded Iraqi child recalled the famous image from Vietnam of the naked girl running from her village after it has been attacked. Intercut with these images are soldiers playing the Bloodhound Gang song "Burn, Motherf*cker, Burn" on CD players as their tanks drive through Iraqi villages. I recognize that this sequence could be regarded as the most brazenly manipulative sequence in the film, but after watching Control Room, I share the sentiment that American TV viewers rarely get a sense of the human cost of the war.

Moore then focuses on other costs associated with the war, and I think this is one of the film's strengths. He builds a relatively strong case that the war in Iraq is unnecessary before moving on to a critique of the social class issues that have been swept aside in much of the coverage of the war. He uses a multi-ethnic working-class mother from Flint to stand in for many of these critiques. Before the war, Lila Lipscomb speaks proudly of her family's contribution to the US military, but later in the film, after her son has been killed, we see her grief and anger and frustration at her son's death in what she now sees as an unnecessary war. Intercut with these images, we see Moore attempting to goad Congressmen into getting their children to enlist for the war in Iraq. It's one of the few sequences where Moore deploys his usual shtick, but after the mounting tension, it's a welcome release, a break from the sobriety of what we've seen.

The film ends with a call to patriotism, noting that because many working class and poor people are willing to serve in the military, we should ask them to fight only when necessary. It's a fairly effective (and low-key) ending, and although the attempt to redefine patriotism and support of the military is far from subtle, it fairly effectively brings together all of the threads that Moore has been weaving throughout the film.

I'm not yet sure how I feel about the film. I don't think that the film changed my perception of the war or challenged me in any specific way. Like James Berardinelli, I was disappointed by the superficiality of some of the film's critiques of Bush, but I'm wondering if other viewers will feel the same way. I've developed strong opinions about Bush and Iraq, and Moore's film didn't shift those convictions in any specific way.

The film also felt a little scattershot, a little too short attention span, for my tastes (hence my suggestion about the "My Pet Goat" footage). Now, there is a generous reading here: there's so much to cover about the war that you can barely show everything in a two-hour film. In fact, the film (intentionally or not) conveys that effect, and in a sense F9/11 is about the impossibility of really sorting out all of our mixed emotions, our anger, frustration, our sadness, about the war, and I think that may be the strength of Moore's narrative in this film.