"It's a pack of lies." That's been the response of those who dislike Fahrenheit 9/11, whether or not they've seen it. And that's interesting, of course, because as a certain Roman once asked, "What is truth?" without, darn it, sticking around to hear the answer. Is literature a lie, is it a truth truer than true? Is propaganda automatically a lie, even if it's told using truths? Is didacticism even effective? What do we mean when we talk about 'truthful' vs. "faithful" history in Mormonism? Great issues all.

I went to see Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, expecting it to be a one-sided, unfair polemic, which it is. We've talked about reviewing it on AML, and some folks have wished that we won't, because they don't want to get caught up in partisan bickering. But it's because a valuable and important cultural artifact, and because we Mormon types have been on the receiving end of one-sided polemics and because a lot of our art is pretty polemical too, maybe we ought to, if we're careful here. I'll do my best to be objective, anyway, and to keep this review within AML guidelines.

Okay, it's a documentary, and that's interesting immediately, because it ties into a debate documentary filmmakers have been having ever since Flaherty met Nanook--how objective, how truthful does a documentary have to be? Granting that pure objectivity is impossible, how much do we allow our p.o.v. to show?

Take, for example, a very different documentary, Winged Migration. If you haven't seen it, it's a wonderful doc about migrating birds, by the same folks who made Microcosmos, about bugs. Okay, so you see all these gorgeous shots of flying geese, and you see the ground from their perspective, and at times, the only thing that's being documented is "this is what the earth looks like from the perspective of a migrating goose." But the film is also sort of faked. They couldn't get a camera up in the air with the geese without getting a bunch of hatchlings to imprint on an ultra-light. So it looks non-intrusive, but it isn't. It also has an agenda. When hunters shoot some ducks, it's shocking, because we've grown to like those ducks a lot, and they're really beautiful and here one of our friends is dead. So the film is anti-hunting in some pretty unsubtle ways. That's not the ONLY agenda in the film, and it doesn't take up much of the film, but it's there. So the film turns out to be political after all. Is it a lie? Well, hunters do go duck hunting. Ducks die as a result. But I suspect that if I were a duck hunter, I might take issue with the emotions generated by that particular scene.

So does Michael Moore lie in Fahrenheit. Well, what do we mean by lie? Here are some possibilities:

Does he lie by making assertions that are just not true?

No, he never does. One might quibble about some of the details. I've seen folks on the right complain about the way Moore has portrayed connections between the Bush family and the Saudi royal family, and the Bush family and the Binladen family. But no one denies that such ties exist; the argument is over details that frankly aren't all that important. Now, if you're a Bush partisan, you might think those details are very important, but I've never seen a criticism of the film that dealt with anything more substantial than stuff like did a plane carrying the Binladens out of the country leave on September 13 or 14? Little things like that. Still, duck hunters do shoot ducks; I'm not sure it matters which size birdshot they use.

Does he lie by omitting facts inconvenient to his argument?

Oh, boy, does he ever. This is his main method. The biggie, the most important omission of all, is Iraq. Moore argues that there is simply NO moral or legal rationale for our invasion of Iraq, aside from Halliburton greed. And that's just not so. He explodes the WMD argument, fine. He destroys the Saddam/Al Quaida link argument, okay. But there's another argument that is morally compelling that he never so much as mentions, and that's the human rights argument. Moore shows lots of pre-invasion footage of Baghdad, and makes it look like a pretty idyllic town--nice playgrounds for happy children, plenty of well-turned-out shoppers in the streets. But it wasn't all that idyllic, and we all know it. Saddam was a brutal dictator, and a war criminal. Moore discusses, and shows footage of, Saudi human rights abuses. Fair enough. But Saddam was way worse, and Moore has to know it.

Back to our duck hunters. Is there NO justification for duck hunting? Obviously there are lots of justifications for it. If one is starving, and has only a shotgun, one might be morally justified, for example. If I go home tonight and have chicken for dinner, I'm gonna look pretty foolishly hypocritical inveighing against duck hunters. So Winged Migration makes a one-sided case, relying entirely on how we feel when we see one of our duck friends die.

Now, none of this means that duck hunting, or Iraq invading, are morally justified. It just means that a case can be made for them being justified. If you want to be fair, or balanced, or objective, you need to present both sides of the argument, and let viewers make up their own minds. But Moore shows only one person defending Bush, and that's Brittney Spears, appearing more than usually vapid. Ergo, all people who defend Bush are vapid. But that's obviously not so. As for the ducks, I don't know what you do. I suppose you could interview a hunter, but it wouldn't work in the film--it'd be jarringly inappropriate, since we never interview any people in the film at all. We just show the birds. (The film also shows an injured bird being pursued by sand crabs. It's unwatchably brutal--the film has a strong anti-sand crab bias too. But you could sure make the same film from the perspective of the sand crabs.)

Does Moore lie by insinuation and implication, using certain facts to create an impression that may not be true, for partisan gain.

Depends on who you support. If you dislike Bush, you're going to agree with some of Moore's conclusions, though I can't stand Bush and I disagree with most of Moore's conclusions. If you admire Bush, you're going to disagree with everything Moore says about the man. But does he lie? I don't think so; I think he argues from evidence. Disagree with his conclusions all you want to. Point to exculpatory evidence by all means. But for something to be a lie, it has to tell a deliberate untruth. Moore doesn't really do that.

Remember, too, this is a documentary, even if the only thing it's documenting is how much Moore hates Bush. But a lot of the film involves an interview with a woman whose son died in Iraq. It's emotionally effective, and it's not a lie--the woman really exists, her son really died. Does Moore exploit how we feel about that? Sure.

Does it work? Winged Migration worked great--I thought it was breathtakingly beautiful, and I will never duck hunt again in my life. Actually I couldn't--I've never duck hunted before, either. (My objections are aesthetic, not moral). But I won't start. Mostly, the film is trying to show me how magnificent some of God's creatures are, and incidentally suggesting we oughtn't to shoot them. The first point is made sensationally well. The second part is more debatable, but you don't have to agree with it to enjoy the film.

Fahrenheit 9/11 is less successful. Okay, I was a puddle by the end. You get Neil Young singing "Rockin' in the Free World" at the end, and I'm totally there. No way I vote for Bush in November. But then, I wasn't going to anyway. I'm already motivated. What about a conservative partisan? The film won't convince them. Okay, so what about a swing voter? I suspect it will have little effect. It's just too one-sided, too unfair. A thinking voter will go "hey, there was a humanitarian side to this that you're missing." But then, this is Michael Moore we're talking about. Of course he's not balanced, or fair. But it's also not a pack of lies.

Neither is Winged Migration, but you know, events were so manipulated to make that film, you could make the case. Migrating birds generally won't allow a camera among them.

What are some genuine pack-of-lies films? Well, for us Mormon types, one example is The Godmakers. That film just flat out lies about Mormonism, in an effort to make us look as foolish and as wicked as possible. It does things that are just egregious--misquoting our scriptures, for example, and inventing things like weapons stockpiles under LDS chapels.

LDS filmmakers have generally stayed away from the Michael Moore attack doc form. What we do instead is make equally one-sided films, but with rose colored glasses. Heroic soviet realism, that's more our style.

What's really interesting is how both Mormons and Mooremans manipulate us emotionally. At the end of Legacy, for example, we get backlit pioneers, trudging heroically westwards. We LOVE musical underscoring, which is very prominent in both Winged Migration and Fahrenheit 9/11. The form--documentary filmmaking--sounds very dispassionate and factual. But it's in many ways more emotionally evocative, and to some degree factually questionable, than fiction.

Eric Samuelsen