Goodness gracious, two months and counting since the last Retinal Damage post... let's see if we can't be a little more on the ball in the next few weeks!
It's actually been a pretty slow summer for me, movie-wise. To celebrate the 4th of July, Lori and I went to see Sicko. It's probably Moore's best documentary -- even though he's as prominently featured as in any of his other docs, he's developed a knack for not being the center of attention. He's managed to return to the Everyman persona that made Roger and Me so fresh. In fact, Moore's trek through an English hospital in hopes of finding the cashier is reminiscent of his attempts to find Roger Smith: He at least gives the illusion that he's the Average American befuddled that how he thought the world worked isn't turning out to be true.
Of course, Moore's detractors say his films are all illusion, nothing but a tissue of doctored news articles, biased interviews and emotional grandstanding masking the director's hatred for America. Such arguments are usually motivated by their propounders' own ideological concerns and/or a dismal misunderstanding of the documentary format. Moore is biased and given to emotional grandstanding but neither is necessarily a bad quality. For that matter, all documentaries are based on illusion, the notion that something "real" has been directly represented without any interference from the filmmaker.
But one of the more interesting thing about Sicko is how Moore makes the illusion obvious. Much has been made about Dr. Sanjay Gupta's report about the various "flaws" in Sicko. Moore's summary of Gupta's claims and his own retorts are here. By and large, each gentlemen dances around the other's claims; each rightly points out that the other somewhat cherrypicks data to support his claims. But the critique that Gupta makes that sticks is one that I noticed when I saw the film: Moore takes 9/11 rescue workers to Cuba for free medical treatment and presents the island as a bastion of happy citizens and socialized medicine. But earlier in the film, Moore included a graphic that demonstrated that Cuba's health care system ranks two spots lower than does that of the United States, according to the World Health Organization.
Moore responded to Gupta's claim by in effect admitting the flaw then denying it was a flaw. "[Sicko] clearly shows the WHO list, with the United States at number #37, and Cuba at #39. Right up on the screen in big five-foot letters.... The movie isn't hiding from this fact. Just the opposite...." This is dodging the larger point: Moore presents Cuba's medical system as superior to America's, yet his own data demonstrates that it probably isn't. (The obviously well worn hospital rooms and equipment further indicate that Cuba's system may not be as strong as Moore claims it to be.)
Moore probably is more interested in the irony in his Cuban jaunt, that 90 miles to the nation's south is an island nation that our government demonizes but that is willing to take better care of our national heroes than our own government has been. But the sequence also shows, if you ask me, the sloppy genius of Moore's documentary style, and why, to an extent, Moore's documentaries are criticism-proof. Moore's documentaries all appeal to a leftist or populist common sense. If Cuba, which ranks lower than the US in the WHO scale, gives better health care to our heroes than we do, well that proves that how screwed up our system is. Several critics likened Bowling for Columbine to cinematic buckshot, but the concept could be applied to any Moore documentary. Any argument or fact or apparent fact or emotion is thrown out in hopes that at least one of them will resonate and prove whatever point Moore hopes to make. Moore is less interested in doing the right thing for the right reason than he is in doing whatever thing seems right to him. He's more interested in results than in a coherent method.
And that's why he's probably the nation's best documentarian. He isn't interested in the form of documentary that can make Errol Morris's films too cold or academic for mainstream audiences, and he isn't at all interested in maintaining the facade of objectivity that marks direct cinema filmmakers like Drew and the Maysles brothers. He's an American Jean Rouche, taking a cinema of confrontation and blending it with the narcissism that we Americans do so well. Perhaps the most fitting irony, then, of Sicko is its concluding complaint about American narcissism, about ending the "me" culture to establish a "we" culture. Without that "me" culture, would we have Michael Moore?
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4 comments:
Yay RD is back...I promise to be better about contributing this time around and won't just do collaborative posts.
Re: Sicko I agree with most of what you have said here Mookie, particularly the part about Moore and "me" culture. However, I don't necessarily believe that just because Moore wears his authorial voice on his shirt-sleeve means that he is outside of critique. There are multiple effective ways of approaching documentary filmmaking and Moore's blatant foregrounding of himself and his perspective, while honest, is just another rhetorical style of an ever-evolving genre.
I actually thought that the film picked up steam and assumed a much more cohesive structure once Moore became a "character." He is part of his own style, so he should just embrace it. It's not like his absence from the screen equals "objective," "fly-on-the-wall" filmmaking in the vein of Wiseman or the Drew & Assoc. bunch. (BTW, I am not necessarily arguing that there is any such thing as "objectivity" in filmmaking. The Maysles Bros. and Pennebaker certainly featur(ed) themselves in their films far more than the general consensus would have us believe - Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens are cases in point.)
One of the most interesting but irksome parts of the movie in regard to your argument re: "me" culture was when Moore decided to reveal his donation to the medical costs of his biggest blogger foe's wife. Um, Michael...the gesture might have actually been selfless if you chose to keep it anonymous as opposed to telling us all how selfless it was.
I know that he was emphasizing the concept of "we" and championing free speech in a democratic society. But, still, he would have driven the point home quite effectively without his self-congratulatory confession.
Is the revelation self-congratulatory? Or is it, instead, the most terribly exquisite way in which Moore could have humiliated his blogging foe: to make him indebted to his opponent for his wife's life? Greek tragedy rarely does it better.
I didn't mean to say that Moore was outside of critique; rather, I think that criticisms of his films largely miss the point. All anyone might say about Moore is probably true, but his films are no less the powerful for that because he has some other point that he's made that balances or counteracts whatever mistake he's made. Yes, Moore tends to gloss over the prodigious taxes people in the UK and France pay for all of their social services, but the image of him searching for the cashier only to find that the cashier wants to give him money undercuts that critique. It indirectly underscores the point that in Europe, the government in effect redistributes wealth fairly equitably and for a greater good. Moore may not have made this connection himself but the giddy messiness of his style -- so much humor! so much crazy info! -- makes these connections possible.
Actually, cohesive is a good word to use in place of coherent when describing Moore's films. With the exception of Roger and Me, which seems oddly cautious nearly 20 years later, his films have a delerious quality to them that give them their energy. I'm thinking of the controversial animated sequence in Bowling, the ice cream truck gag in 9/11, the bullhorn at Guantanomo Bay in Sicko, the corporate cops in The Big Picture: images and stunts that crystallize the ludicrousness not only of whatever Moore is studying but his own satiric approach. His films are themselves ridiculous to an extent, as though Moore is thinking in the back of his mind, "I can't believe I'm having to make this movie. Is [corporate America/corporate America/George Bush/corporate America] really this greedy and stupid?"
In the post that began this thread, I had tried to identify another filmmaker as an influence on Moore but couldn't come up with anyone that fit. But I think I might have it now: Moore is a hybrid of Jean Rouch and MAD publisher William Gaines. A commitment to using documentary as a tool to examine social systems and those they impact, and a bewilderment that those social systems could be so stupid.
Did anyone watch Moore's short-lived TV series, TV Nation? I believe this is where Moore shines the best. His style works so much better when he does short, poignant segments.
Loved Sicko BTW, but totally agree with Michele on this one.
Also, a closer and more serious look at the real payment that France and England make, i.e. much higher taxes, might have made for a more thorough documentary, but nowhere near as entertaining a one.
Moore specializes in politics through entertainment.
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