“I am a citizen of the United States of America. Our government has been overthrown. Our elected president has been exiled. Old white men wielding martinis and wearing dickies have occupied our nation’s capital.”
– the opening chapter of Michael Moore‘s Stupid White Men
about the time the american/british coalition forces were about to invade iraq in march last year, i read michael moore’s hilarious take on everything-that-is-america, stupid white men. i didn’t read his current book as later on in stupid, it got a bit samey. i do have a short attention span sometimes. hehe.
not last night. i saw his palme d’or–winning opus, fahrenheit 9/11. screen 10 was pretty much half-filled (it was released last week). but then, probably a multiplex audience would prefer spider-man 2 anyway on a friday evening! i watched bowling for columbine last year on dvd, so i knew just what to expect last night as i nestled in my seat with my usual fare of nachos and diet coke.
we’ve all read it all before on how the u.s. of a got itself a chimp for president. reiterate these points in the initial segments he did, it still blew my mind. what followed through were several disclosures on events before and during 9/11, the subsequent failures to capture bin laden in afghanistan and the unnecessary horrors in iraq. they even had bitney spears spouting praises supporting dubya while chewing some gum. the detractors would say that moore was telling one side of a story. a half-baked yarn that moore would have us to believe. well. after the biased reporting of the war by the american media? after the u.s. government scaring the american public into thinking every man with a bin in the middle of his name is involved with al qaeda? hell yeah, this movie should be telling this side of the story!
this may not mean much in the greater scale of things. i saw a news report on sky the other day where they interterviewed a staunchly republican american couple. after watching the movie, they said that it was a wake-up call and the republicans will definitely not get their votes this coming november.
i know that michael moore is pretty sensationalist, reminding me of the syed al-attas political paperpacks that bedeck our friendly mamak newspaper stands. moore takes it a braver step further. i know 9/11 did very well in the box office in the ‘states, but i don’t naively expect this movie to have that profound an impact on the american people, as it takes more than just a 110-minute docu-movie to veer the votes away from dubya’s next term in office. if it opens some blinded/blinkered eyes, i think that’s pretty good enough.
