MOVIES: Fahrenheit 9/11

I've never had a movie-going experience like Fahrenheit 9/11.

I can't write an objective and analytical review of this film. I'm not hyper-informed enough to pick out the alleged inaccuracies of the film, nor to counter the inaccuracies of those who listed Michael Moore's inaccuracies in the first place. I don't doubt that some of the film has been exaggerated, taken out of context, skewed to support Moore's beliefs. And those beliefs mirror mine, that Bush and his administration are deeply corrupt, deceitful, and dangerous, so I'm more inclined to take Moore's side in any case.

All I can tell you is how I felt, and what I'm still feeling, 24 hours later.

It was an incredibly emotional two hours. I cycled through any number of powerful feelings -- I was furious, I was appalled, I was horrified, I was laughing out loud, I was ashamed, I was sickened, I was guilt-ridden, I was deeply mournful. I was devastated. I literally had tears running down my cheeks at one point: when, in the film's centerpiece, Moore talks to a woman from his hometown of Flint, Michigan, a conservative military booster who lost a son in Iraq -- her world has been destroyed, and she doesn't even know why -- it's overwhelming, just overwhelming. Thinking about it even now, I feel my throat tightening and my eyes watering. You can't watch that segment and be unmoved. You simply can't. Unless you're a robot. In which case you totally deserve to have your ass kicked by Will Smith.

She reads her son's last letter home, and he asks her what he's doing there, why Bush has sent him and so many others to Iraq, and she doesn't have any more idea than he did. But Moore has an idea or two, most of them involving the vast amounts of money the Saudis invest in America. Fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, the Bin Laden family are Saudis, but Bush can't afford to alienate a country with that much money -- especially when they're spending it on companies closely related to him and his family. So instead he picks a scapegoat, trumps up some WMD charges, and off to war we go.

That's what Moore believes to be true, and that's what he sets out to prove. Whether he succeeds or not is up to the individual filmgoer.

But there are things in this film that can not be countered or spun. The human cost, on both sides of this war, is immeasurable. Try to hate the Iraqis, when you see a pickup truck full of dead Iraqi children. Try blaming the U.S. soldiers, when you see a double amputee describe the crushing pain he still feels in his missing hands, or a mother's grief at losing her firstborn son.

I certainly wasn't alone in the audience. When I got emotional, I could hear others around me in the same state: gasping, sniffling, snorting at Bush's clownish pandering to the rich while the poor on both sides were dying. There were even some who, like me, sat through the end credits to hear all of Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World," which was a decompression period, a cathartic release, at the end of such a roller coaster of emotions. There was little else I could think of for hours after I left the theater. This is a film that stays with you.

I couldn't recommend this film more highly. Everyone needs to see it. Even those who hate Michael Moore, who support the president without question (as Britney Spears is shown professing in one hilarious interview segment) -- if only to come out of it saying, "I still support the war, but now I'm fully aware of the human cost involved."