Michael Moore’s scathing indictment of the Bush administration, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” winner of the top prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, doesn’t break a lot of new ground.
If you’ve been watching recent installments of “60 Minutes” and Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show,” or if you’re familiar with this year’s best-seller list (especially Craig Unger’s “House of Bush, House of Saud”), you won’t find many surprises here.
Indeed, the opening scenes amount to a condensed version of Richard Perez and Joan Seckler’s 2002 documentary, “Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election,” which made the case that the 2000 election was stolen. Much of the rest is reminiscent of Robert Greenwald’s 2003 documentary, “Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War,” which used interviews with CIA, Pentagon and foreign-service experts to demolish the rationale behind the war.
But put all these approaches together, connect the dots, throw in a few brand-new interviews and never-seen-before clips of President Bush looking especially befuddled, and you’ve got a remarkably powerful narrative — and a movie that communicates an unshakeable sense of non-fiction tragedy. No wonder conservatives are trying so hard to shut it down before it reaches theaters.
The freshest ammunition in Moore’s arsenal is a camcorder tape of Bush’s ultra-delayed reaction to the news that the World Trade Center had been hit by terrorists. On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Bush was reading to kids at a Florida elementary school. After being informed of the attacks, Bush froze and continued with the classroom lesson — for nearly seven minutes.
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