Fahrenheit 11/9 Review

As with all Michael Moore’s films Fahrenheit 11/9 (not 9/11 , that’s his other one) is one of the most eye-opening films of the year, and one I think more of us should see. The film opens with celebrities and news hosts from the run-up to the 2016 election joking about how Trump would never be president, but we have time’s greatest gift on our side, hindsight, and I slide down in my seat, knowing the true outcome and how wrong all these smiling and joking ‘experts’ were.

If you haven’t seen any of his films, Michael Moore does a wonderful job of telling a side of the story from a perspective you rarely see, and in this case, there are too many stories to count. This film, like all of his others, starts with an outcome we all know; like the financial crisis of 2008 in Capitalism: A Love Story , and in this film the shock victory of Donald J Trump beating Hillary Clinton to the White House. At this point I was comfortably lying on my sofa as I knew what had happened (we all do), but then Michael Moore reaches a hand out of the TV to check that you’re still awake and watching by dropping a bomb shell on you. In this instance he doesn’t blame Russia or a rigged voting system, which is what we would all be expecting for the result of 11/9. No, he blames Gwen Stefani (yeah, that woman off The Voice) for the election of the 45th president. This is explained in a slightly twisted but humorous way by Moore as he speaks over B roll footage from Trump announcing his campaign and actors cheering Trump on. These unexpected reveals keep hitting home hard throughout the film give a different perspective on the political environment in the US to what you are used to.

Throughout the film Moore keeps you on the edge of your seat by revealing information to you, that in hindsight, we should all know about by now. Maybe I’m naive, and maybe you’re more up to date with North American politics than me, but I don’t think the general public know a lot about how manipulative the democrats were in the runup to the 2016 election. The twisted nature of the political landscape, on both the left and the right is revealed, but not just in the past decade, going back to the 1990’s and how politicians use their power for ‘the good of the people’ to keep their party in power. This is an underlying theme of the film. Moore picks out instances from recent history where the elected officials (even the highly regarded ones) who are meant to protect and help the citizens, screw them over instead and do what’s best for them and their friends and allies.

Fear not, however, as Moore makes you laugh throughout, be it at our own stupidity, or by him trying to arrest numerous members of the government for poisoning over 10,000 children (yeah, that happened, I had no idea, did you?). There are so many topics talked about in this film that it would take me days to present it all, which makes the film all the more impressive, as he fits it all into 120 minutes. If you want an eye widening experience of a part of the USA’s political landscape over the past 20-30 years, I urge you to get some popcorn and watch Fahrenheit 11/9 , or Fahrenheit 9/11 for that matter, but that one is all about blowing people up, oil and good old fashioned greed.

-4 stars