Fahrenheit 911 Control Room
Cooper, Rand Richards
Rand Richards Cooper AT WAR Fahrenheit 9/11' & 'Control Room' hen Cannes bestowed the Palme d'Or on Fahrenheit 9/11 last May, it wasn't all that surprising, a political paint bomb lobbed from...
...People like victory...
...The mostly Arab reporters, editors, and producers we meet are candid about their dismay at the American invasion...
...Second, that he and Bandar spent a merry evening plotting how to safeguard the fortunes of the Saudis and their American corporate connections...
...September 11 guaranteed that United Defense was going to have a very good year," Moore intones...
...And maybe we need a Moore to help get the job done...
...Here Moore's primal sense of justice, roused on behalf of the mostly poor young Americans who join the armed forces, rises to a moving pitch of indignation...
...To me, Fahrenheit 9/11 fares best when Moore chucks his warmed-over Saturday Night Live act and straightforwardly chronicles a hardworking and patriotic woman named Lila Lipscomb, from his hometown, Flint, Michigan, who loses a son in Iraq...
...But what is he implying, exactly...
...And I have absolute confidence in the ability of the American people...
...Noujaim makes a strong case that this is not so...
...Her documentary takes us behind the scenes at the controversial Arab news organization, Al Jazeera, vilified by the Bush administration as an outlet for anti-American propaganda...
...Michael Moore, on the other hand—whose production company is tellingly called Dog Eat Dog Films—fights fire with fire...
...and cuts to a shot of Bush gleefully laughing...
...You are the most powerful nation on earth, I agree...
...You can defeat everybody, I agree...
...There is one single thing that will be left," " he says...
...Victory, and that's it...
...But don't ask us to love it as well...
...Yet seconds later, asked by a despairing colleague, Who is going to stop the Americans?, Ibrahim answers: "The United States is going to stop the United States...
...After all, who could demand more from a television mystery war fairly...
...Moore asks, "Did the two compare notes?...I wonder if George Bush told Bandar not to worry, because he already had a plan...
...To take one typical charge, he notes that George H. W. Bush serves on the board of the Carlyle Group, an investor consortium whose military interests include United Defense, manufacturer of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle...
...Sometimes in Control Room the clash takes place within a single person...
...Such perplexed moments sound a human note missing from Moore's films...
...Once you are victorious, that's it...
...They dined practically within sight of the Pentagon, he tells us—and cuts to a shot of the Pentagon in flames...
...It makes me hate war," he says...
...or of a fairness that, in his view, we cannot afford...
...Rushing describes feeling ill while watching the clip...
...To packed houses, we know now...
...He smiles, wanly, adding, "I have plans for my children...
...You can crush every-one, I agree...
...First, that Bush was being callous in the extreme, if not traitorous, in inviting a Saudi to dinner on the heels of a murderous Saudi-led attack on Americans...
...A brilliant propagandist, he offers no glimpse of a world without war...
...having acknowledged their sympathies, they strive to produce a fair and balanced news show nonetheless...
...You don't have to justify it...
...And after conC Commonweal 26 August 13, 2004 ducting a phone interview with an American academic who delivers a ranting screed against American imperialism, Al Jazeera's chain-smoking senior producer, Samir Khader, blasts his inter-view director: "Where'd you get this guy...
...of a disinterested view or conflicted mind...
...the fun with American cultural absurdities...
...And third, that they colluded in a cynical campaign to cover their tracks by starting a war against Iraq...
...ontrol Room is EgyptianAmerican director Jehane Noujaim's quietly remarkable study of the slipperiness of news in times of war...
...Bush is a terrible president, and I want him gone as passionately as the next liberal...
...the rowdy rock 'n' roll populism, like REM's "shiny happy people holding hands" piped in over clips of Bush and Co...
...Do we really need to know that deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz greases his hair back with spittle to know that his role in the Iraq war merits condemnation...
...Fahrenheit 9/11 presents the typical Moore package: the faux-naive questions and good-time banjo music...
...For instance, one staffer—doing simultaneous translation of a tendentious Pentagon spokesman—mugs derisively to Noujaim's camera, even as he translates the words, apparently without editorial comment, to Al Jazeera's listeners...
...But in doing so, he'd miss what Noujaim catches—namely, Rushing's deep consternation when the U.S...
...Such operatic insinuation might well sway a jury, but it remains highly circumstantial...
...government condemns Al Jazeera for broad-casting video of American soldiers' mutilated bodies...
...Noujaim does people the honor of exploring their conflicting allegiances—and their mixed motives...
...Later, following a somberly frightening montage of the World Trade calamity, Moore in-forms us that Saudi ambassador and Bush pal Prince Bandar dined privately with Bush at the White House just two nights later...
...Noujaim catches this ambivalence again and again, opening up wide realms of ambiguity where Moore habitually narrows to a hard point of certainty...
...For once, Moore has the sense to shut up as Lipscomb quotes from her son's last letter: "I am so furious...
...There is no doubt, for instance, what Moore would do to the Army spokesman, Josh Rushing, who is one of Noujaim's primary subjects: he would destroy him...
...I really hope they don't re-elect that fool, honestly...
...For instance, after informing us that the first to call Bush the victor on election night 2000 was Bush's own cousin, Fox News analyst John Ellis, Moore asks, "How does Bush get away with this...
...Then we cut to Richard Clarke testifying about Bush's insistent focus, in the aftermath of 9/11, on Saddam Hussein...
...That the other bin Ladens knew in advance...
...Fahrenheit 9/11 is not a documentary, it's a prosecution, charging a dark convergence of interest between the Bush family and the Saudis, including the wealthy bin Laden clan...
...Its preoccupation with objectivity places Control Room in profound contrast to Fahrenheit 9/11...
...After listing his many reservations about the American system in general and news organizations in particular, Al Jazeera producer Khader draws deeply on his cigarette and says: "But between us, if I get offered a job at Fox, I will take it...
...In the documentary's closing scene, a soft unexpected rain falls over the media outpost in the desert as Khader ponders the futility of trying to cover Celia Wren BLOODHOUND Helen Mirren in 'Prime Suspect' n the great video store in heaven, the shelf of Prime Suspect episodes is infinitely long...
...That Osama bin Laden masterminded the attacks to boost his family's investment...
...These are grave charges, madethrough a folksy innuendo that looks a lot like demagoguery, albeit of an often hilarious variety...
...In comparison, the American reporters Noujaim surveys seem guilty of lazy dependence on Pentagon spinners, and some-times of outright cheerleading...
...The bin Ladens belong to the Carlyle Group, too—indeed, Moore ominously relates, both the senior Bush and a bin Laden family member were attending a Carlyle meeting in Washington on September 11...
...That Bush pere knew...
...But the question remained, how would the film play in Peoria...
...Consider the implications of this presentation...
...than this steely British police procedural, shot with a lightning-rod attentiveness to detail and atmosphere and show-casing one of our era's great actresses, Helen Mirren...
...Bush got us out here for nothing...
...Here on earth, the chronCommonweal 2 7 August 13, 2004...
...Or dishonestly, either...
...But though in the past I have admired Moore's films—with reservations—this time the contrarian in me resists his Snidely Whiplash-like portrayals of villainy...
...and indeed, Fahrenheit 9/11 is a masterly piece of propaganda...
...History is written by the victors—they have the final control room—and all you can do in the face of this reality, Jehane's film implies, is to assert an idea and a model of fairness, however doomed...
...I have absolute confidence in the American Constitution...
...Fahrenheit opened on 868 screens in June—unheard of for a documentary—then spread to twice that many on the 4th of July weekend, bringing Michael Moore's brand of political fireworks home to Main Street and symbolically affirming his status as an American patriot...
...Rand Richards Cooper AT WAR Fahrenheit 9/11' & 'Control Room' hen Cannes bestowed the Palme d'Or on Fahrenheit 9/11 last May, it wasn't all that surprising, a political paint bomb lobbed from Europe toward the White House...
...As a prosecutor Moore works by a kind of evidentiary pointillism, not so much connecting the dots as spraying them into a shadowy outline of complicity...
...glad-handing various Saudi royals...
...One eloquent and combative reporter, Hassan Ibrahim, loudly rejects the American condemnation of Al Jazeera for showing Iraqi civilians wounded in bombing attacks...
...But beneath the mirth works an ice-cold tactician...
...From the opening scenes, when we listen in on Al Jazeera staffers discussing the merits of eliminating Saddam, we find ourselves in the presence of something Michael Moore never provides: a substantial clash of opinions...
...That even if he didn't know, he probably wasn't too upset when it happened...
...He's just a crazy activist...
...Tricky cuts and juxtapositions create damning, and quite possibly misleading, impressions of villainy...
...then goes on to admit that the next night, when the network showed wounded and dead Iraqis, he found himself less bothered—and is deeply troubled by the differencein his own reactions...
Vol. 131 • August 2004 • No. 14
