Fahrenheit 11/9 – Film Review

Complacency is the film’s controlling idea. It unifies each of Fahrenheit’s major case studies. These angles include the Flint water crisis, the role of the media, the rise of Bernie Sanders, and political activism from the students who survived the school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

The water crisis is a particularly appalling situation that needed real people power to be resolved instead of relying on corrupt bureaucrats. Moore attributes the situation to the actions of Governor Richard Snyder. He describes Snyder’s practices as ‘slow-motion ethnic cleansing’. The governor contaminated the area’s drinking water by building a new pipeline, which resulted in lead poisoning and the corrosion of a General Motors factory. Over ten thousand children drank the water, and efforts were made to cover up the test results that proved the toxicity. Snyder opted to fix the manufacturing plant’s water but allowed the public’s supply to continue to be polluted.

Moore also attacks the Democrats for their ineptitude and lack of agency during the 2016 election. He argues Hillary Clinton was too occupied giving speeches to major banks while Trump campaigned in the pivotal Rust Belt states that heavily impacted on the election result. This is true because the Democratic Party is currently funded by large corporations that influence its establishment policies, and Trump, as much as he lied, did visit the states his opponents neglected.

The takedown of the establishment Democrats is summarised by an awkward scene involving Barack Obama. He showed his support for the cockroach Snyder by sipping water to prove it wasn’t polluted. It’s a very disheartening scene because one would expect more from him than cheap political stunts.

The film continues to grow and unfolds as a gripping call to arms. It argues that people must act if they expect any form of social change. Moore states, ‘if people aren’t asserting themselves, Democracy will go away’, which is a powerful reminder about people standing up to protect their beliefs. The footage of the teachers on strike in West Virginia, singing John Denver’s song ‘Country Road’, is particularly stirring.

Despite being sold out by their union, we are told that the teachers persisted and won their fight for higher wages. Moore encourages people to partake in this type of activism, believing it is a catalyst for change. He refuses to soft-peddle the action with a ‘we can do it’ message either. He reflects on the challenges, underlining how the Democrats rigged the Primary against Bernie Sanders, and how Hispanic communities became disenfranchised and distant, believing it was pointless to vote.

In the final quarter, the film circles back to Trump with a fiery statement that few other American filmmakers today could make. In one darkly funny sequence, Moore cuts to stock footage of Adolf Hitler speaking but pastes Trump’s voice over the images. The audio-vision is hilarious and disturbing as he credibly associates the Third Reich with the current US administration.

He describes how the Reichstag was burnt down and the Third Reich blamed it on their own political opponents to frame and isolate them. Moore argues this event and Hitler’s subsequent rise mirrors the September 11 terrorist attacks, the growth of authoritarianism and Trump’s embrace of fascist principles, including the suppression of the media.

Fahrenheit 11-9 does not provide exciting new powerful revelations about Trump’s psyche. Who would dare venture into that dark rabbit hole? Instead, it presses people to be accountable so that this tactless embrace of mob rule, authoritarianism and dictatorships is never repeated.

Greed, neglect, complacency and corruption are why the world has been saddled with Trump’s incompetency. He is symptomatic of the diseases that have infested the US political system and left people feeling despondent. Moore’s question therefore is not ‘how do we remove Trump?’, as many would be predicting, but in the film’s own words, ‘how the fuck did we get here?’

Moore might be alone in making large political statements, but he genuinely cares about people. ‘The America I want to save is the one I’ve never had’, he says because he wants people to have better lives and believes that personal action is pertinent in discovering social change. As a example of complacency and activism, I found it darkly funny, but also powerful and occasionally moving.