Where to Invade Next?

Michael Moore is back. After an absence of seven years, the agent provocateur of American documentary filmmaking returns to our cinemas with his latest, Where to Invade Next?, a light-hearted look at the benefits of European-style socialism, which Moore hopes to import as a solution for the problems in his home country.

In a modernised version of the ‘Grand Tour’, Moore zips through Europe, looking at the particular aspects each country excels in: from France he takes the idea of nutritious school meals; from Iceland the emphasis on women in roles of power; from Norway the rehabilitation-focussed prison system, and so on. Along the way he briefly mentions the difficulties facing America, with a montage of footage that runs from the Korean War, all the way up to Eric Garner’s last moments.

He also gives statistics that – to UK ears – sound horrific, such as the fact that systematic electoral manipulation means that in states like Florida, up to one in three black men cannot vote. Those watching in Europe may feel smug, but they cannot escape culpability: at one point, Moore lists the companies that use American prison workers– in effect modern slave labour – including Microsoft and Delta Airlines. We are all Americans now; none of us can take the moral high-ground.

Moore concludes the film with the bombastic claim that – surprise, surprise – all these things are actually American ideas. While the truth of this statement is certainly debatable (despite the fact that women marched in support of the Equal Rights Amendment several years before the election of Iceland’s Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, I don’t think America can lay claim to the totality of the idea of women’s rights), it serves to highlight Moore’s willingness to clearly display his ideological heart on his sleeve. This is a feature of Moore that is both frustrating and endearing – particularly when you consider that much of Moore’s work is borne from deep-seated frustration at the current American administration, and a desire to better the lot of society’s most marginalised individuals.

Ending the film like this, however, simply begs the question: just where did America go wrong? And unfortunately for Moore, this is a much more interesting question than the one he is asking. Moore works much better when he looks to his home turf, such as in his exemplary Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11. In some ways, Where to Invade Next? resembles his 2007 film Sicko, which saw him look at European models of socialised healthcare: both films carry with them a certain cherry-picking sensibility, where Europe is made out to be some kind of paradise. Where to Invade Next? works best as a breezy examination of European sensibilities, but eschews any deeper look at the problems of power structures on both sides of the Atlantic, and does not seem to add anything new to the conversation.