Fahrenheit 9/11 is a documentary film made by Michael Moore that exposes the flaws in President W. Bush’s handling of the tragedy of September 11th. The film is in performative mode, since it features Moore as a direct influence on the people interviewed, he gives his own story and opinion on Bush, and often uses archive footage and protests to display his goal in bringing the President’s failures to light.
The film follows the events that took place after September 11th, 2001, and mainly focuses on Bush specifically and the way that he handled the crisis. However, it also cuts to periods before Bush’s election to explain the context of his career and the way he handled foreign policy after 2001. It also cuts from America to Iraq to show the atrocities of the war, occasionally cutting back to show what Bush was saying to justify the war, and bring to the audience’s attention how insensitive he was to the war crimes he was committing.
The documentary, despite involving such heavy material, has a relatively comedic style. This is done by Moore making fun of the government themselves and using performance and music to mock their actions. This is another example of how Moore inserts himself into the film and makes it performative mode, but the film also focuses on the atrocities and grim situation of war with a much more mature tone to emphasise the awfulness of it, mixing it with clips of Bush to show how disconnected he was from his own war.
Fahrenheit 9/11 accurately shows the disturbing subject matter of Bush’s presidency while also making light humour of his failures and crimes. It uses interviews to effectively show the disillusionment of Congress and the view of the soldier’s on the ground and people watching the news from home. It is memorable and funny, but serious where it is appropriate and very informative on just how corrupt Bush’s presidency was. Despite this, I often found the film hard to follow due to the fast narration and non-linear narrative, and the interviews sometimes took fast-paced to process. The amount of names to remember was also confusing at times, so while I found the film entertaining and informative, I also found it difficult to follow at times and hard to process. I rate Fahrenheit 9/11 3 and a half stars!
Finley Cairns A-Level Film Studies Blog 