Documentary Review: Michael Moore takes on the Trump error with Fahrenheit ¹¹⁄₉

Michael Moore’s lat­est doc­u­men­tary checks all the box­es his films usu­al­ly do: you laugh, you almost cry, you shake your head in frus­tra­tion, and you chuck­le and roll your eyes at some of the stunts he pulls.

In Fahren­heit ¹¹⁄₉, Moore also gives us some rea­son to hope that, despite the dis­as­ter of Don­ald Trump’s pres­i­den­cy, we can get our coun­try mov­ing back in a pro­gres­sive direc­tion and save our democracy.

The films opens with clips from Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton’s ral­ly in Philadel­phia on the night before the 2016 elec­tion; a night filled with hope and the expec­ta­tion that she would be the next Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States.

Then we see clips of Elec­tion Day, includ­ing many women who are emo­tion­al and excit­ed about hav­ing vot­ed for a woman to be Pres­i­dent for the first time.

Moore notes that few expect­ed Trump to win the elec­tion, and shows news clips of var­i­ous pun­dits all say­ing that Clin­ton is going to win. The New York Times said Trump had only a fif­teen per­cent chance of winning.

And yet, we all know what hap­pened: just after 2 AM East­ern Time on 11/9/2016, the Elec­toral Col­lege was called for Trump.

Moore nar­rates over the video of Trump and his fam­i­ly com­ing out on stage to accept vic­to­ry and notes how no one looks par­tic­u­lar­ly hap­py or cel­e­bra­to­ry. Trump had not pre­pared a vic­to­ry speech, because he ann expect­ed him to win.

At 2:29 AM, Trump’s face as the next Pres­i­dent is pro­ject­ed on the Empire State Build­ing. “How… did this hap­pen?” Moore asks emphatically.

It all start­ed with Trump’s announce­ment that he was run­ning for Pres­i­dent, which Moore says was fake and just for pub­lic­i­ty to try to prove his star pow­er to NBC after he learned that Gwen Ste­fani was get­ting paid more for being a judge on The Voice than Trump was get­ting for The Apprentice.

The move back­fired, as he spoke with­out a script and made his infa­mous­ly vile and racist state­ments about Mex­i­can immi­grants, caus­ing NBC to fire him.

Rather than Trump qui­et­ly fad­ing away from soci­ety as we all wish would have hap­pened, his sons con­vinced him to still go through with the two ral­lies he had already planned and paid for.

He loved the large crowds and the ener­gy and atten­tion he got, so he con­tin­ued on with more ral­lies and made it into a real pres­i­den­tial bid.

And the mass media (ahem, CNN) hap­pi­ly gave him plen­ty of air time, get­ting rat­ings and prof­its off of the crass and crazy campaign.

Audio is heard of a CBS exec­u­tive say­ing that “it may not be good for Amer­i­ca, but it’s good for our rat­ings” and admit­ting that they were mak­ing a lot of mon­ey from their cov­er­age of Trump.

Moore also tar­gets celebri­ty news anchors (or, to bor­row a term from James Fal­lows, buck­rak­ers) who were very point­ed and aggres­sive in their inter­views of Clin­ton dur­ing the cam­paign, and like Don­ald Trump, have been accused of sex­u­al harass­ment, includ­ing Matt Lauer, Mark Halperin, and Char­lie Rose.

The film then tran­si­tions from Trump to dis­cussing anoth­er awful elect­ed offi­cial, Michi­gan Gov­er­nor Rick Sny­der. Moore’s home state of Michi­gan elect­ed Sny­der in 2010. Like Trump, Sny­der had no polit­i­cal or pub­lic ser­vice expe­ri­ence. He was the CEO of Gate­way com­put­ers, and promised to run the state like a business.

Once in office, he quick­ly took action to con­sol­i­date his pow­er and reward his rich friends by pass­ing a tax break for the rich and con­vinc­ing the Leg­is­la­ture to pass an emer­gency man­ag­er law. This statute enabled him to replace the demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly-elect­ed may­ors and city coun­cils of strug­gling cities includ­ing Detroit and Flint, with his cronies who worked to pri­va­tize var­i­ous aspects of city ser­vices and make mon­ey for their and Sny­der’s friends and supporters.

Moore then explains the basics of the Flint water cri­sis, and how Sny­der and oth­er gov­ern­ment offi­cials have failed to take any action to address it. The sher­iff of Flint tells Moore that he believes Sny­der should be charged crim­i­nal­ly, say­ing “it is an inten­tion­al act” to let peo­ple to con­tin­ue to be poi­soned by the water.

This leads to some clas­sic Moore antics.

He goes to gov­er­nor’s office at the state capi­tol and tries to make a cit­i­zen’s arrest of the gov­er­nor, but he is not there. So Moore fills up a water truck with water from Flint and goes to the gov­er­nor’s man­sion. He gets no response on the inter­com at the gate, so he sprays the water over the fence and into the yard.

Going back to Trump, Moore shows footage of the vio­lence against pro­tes­tors and peo­ple of col­or at Trump’s ral­lies and how Trump eggs it on.

Trump in his ral­lies and mem­bers of his cam­paign staff in inter­views repeat­ed­ly ref­er­ence “the real Amer­i­ca” as being who he rep­re­sents, as opposed to “left­ists.”

But, says Moore, we are a pro­gres­sive, lib­er­al, left­ist country.

A major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans sup­port equal pay, labor unions, a high­er min­i­mum wage, a low­er mil­i­tary bud­get, stronger envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions, are pro choice, believe immi­gra­tion is good for the coun­try, and do not own guns.

If we are the major­i­ty, he asks, why don’t we con­trol any of the branch­es of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and a minor­i­ty of state governments?

In pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date has won the pop­u­lar vote in six of the last sev­en elec­tions. Al Gore and Hillary Clin­ton would have become Pres­i­dent if we used the nation­al pop­u­lar vote instead of the Elec­toral Col­lege to seat win­ners, which Moore says was writ­ten into the Con­sti­tu­tion to appease the slave states.

We can’t real­ly call it a democ­ra­cy if the per­son who gets the most votes does­n’t win, Moore says. He then pro­ceeds to dis­cuss the 2016 Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial pri­maries and the par­ty’s use of auto­mat­ic, unpledged del­e­gates at its nation­al con­ven­tion. This turned peo­ple away, both from the par­ty and from the elec­tion, Moore argues.

“The loss of faith in democ­ra­cy becomes our death knell,” said a Yale his­to­ri­an inter­viewed in the film. Auto­crats only suc­ceed when enough peo­ple give up, he said.

Moore then strikes a more hope­ful tone, high­light­ing many pro­gres­sive, first-time can­di­dates run­ning for office this year, includ­ing New York’s Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez (the like­ly suc­ces­sor to Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Joseph Crow­ley) and Michi­gan’s Rashi­da Tlaib, who if elect­ed would become the first Mus­lim woman in Congress.

Oca­sio-Cortez, who we see door­belling in Queens shares a thought with the cam­era: the con­cept of “elec­toral insan­i­ty,” which she defines as elect­ing the same peo­ple over and over and expect­ing dif­fer­ent results.

Moore then high­lights the momen­tum of oth­er move­ments sweep­ing the coun­try, such as teacher’s strikes, which start­ed in West Vir­ginia and were fol­lowed up in many oth­er states includ­ing Ari­zona, Ken­tucky, and Col­orado, and the March for Our Lives move­ment start­ed by the teen sur­vivors of the school shoot­ing in Park­land, Flori­da. On one day there were over sev­en hun­dred march­es in the Unit­ed States and over a hun­dred more in oth­er cities around the globe.

After alter­nat­ing between an old black and white video about the attrib­ut­es of despo­tism and clips of how those are all present in our soci­ety today, Moore empha­sizes that it “does­n’t need to end like this”.

He ends the film with a clip from Emma Gon­za­lez’s speech at the March for Our Lives, high­light­ing the gen­er­a­tion of activists that is help­ing to lead much of the change that is so des­per­ate­ly need­ed in our coun­try right now.

I def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend see­ing Fahren­heit ¹¹⁄₉, as it gives you some need­ed per­spec­tive on things in these chal­leng­ing times while also stok­ing your frus­tra­tions and moti­vat­ing you to keep push­ing for change. I also learned a few more things about the Flint water cri­sis that I was­n’t aware of previously.

Fahren­heit ¹¹⁄₉ opened on Sep­tem­ber 21st and can be screened in the­aters across  the Pacif­ic Northwest.