Fahrenheit 9/11 (Single Disc) DVD | Movie Mail UK

Star Review

If the prospect of George W. Bush gaining another term in office is a disturbing one, we can at least take comfort from fact that with the batch of radical and activist documentaries currently springing from the US, his policies - and those of big business, will not go blandly unchallenged. Film-maker Michael Moore proves that he is still at the top of this growing agitprop pile with Fahrenheit 9/11 - a shamelessly biased but coruscating attack on the Bush administration and the war on Iraq. It is assembled with such energy and passion that it is impossible to see it and not be alarmed or amazed by some of its revelations.

Fahrenheit 9/11 was propelled by controversy from the get-go. Accepting an Oscar for his last film Bowling for Columbine in March 2003, Moore used his speech to attack the president and was unceremoniously cut by the event’s programme makers. Some time later, the Disney Company, Fahrenheit’s original backers, got cold feet and announced that they were not going to distribute the film. When it was shown in competition at Cannes however, it won the Palme d’Or - securing its potential success but causing another storm by being judged on its politics and not its 'artistic integrity'.

Indeed, like Bowling for Columbine and the recent Super Size Me and Jeremy Hardy vs the Israeli Army, Fahrenheit 9/11 should not be judged in aesthetic terms. Rather, it exists to provoke, shock and amuse in a way that is free from the restraints of the conventional documentary film. Certainly, it is manipulative as well as politically driven. But in its contentious exploration of Bush’s links with the Bin Laden family, the debacle of his 2000 election and Congress’s farcical approach to Bill reading, Fahrenheit 9/11 is an essential counterbalance to the government-sanctioned hysteria that has dominated global politics since September 2001.

Julian Upton on 3rd October 2004

View all 77 of Julian Upton’s reviews

[ Show Film Description ]