Sunday, July 18, 2004

Fahrenheit heat

Ed Kemmick is pretty tough on Fahrenheit 9/11. While what Ed says is right as far as it goes, the movie left me feeling much better than it apparently left him feeling.

Does anybody really think that the public debate over Iraq would be enhanced by additional facts? I've had about as many facts as I can stand. Moore could have made a judicious, balanced, factually rigorous film about Iraq - and 11 people would have seen it. He's a polemicist, not Frederick Wiseman. It made me feel good to see such a rank piece of propaganda getting full commercial film treatment. And I suspect Moore, perhaps despite himself, has done more to spark healthy public debate than any other American.

I was thinking about this topic anyway after again seeing "The Last Detail" on TV last night. This is a great movie, a gritty, blindingly realistic view of life as an enlisted man in the Navy. Dissing the military has fallen so badly out of style that when the movie ended, I wondered whether such a movie could be made today. "Fahrenheit 9/11" gives me hope that it could.

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