Persuasive and passionate. 'Fahrenheit 9/11' is both. It's also Michael Mo

[RamboLiberal]

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/06/24/DDG357AP2J1.DTL&type=movies

The big moment in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" comes midway through the documentary, and there's no mistaking it: It's the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and the president of the United States is sitting in a little chair in a Florida classroom. His chief of staff enters and whispers in his ear that the country is under attack. And President George W. Bush just sits there for seven long minutes.
In a forceful documentary devoted to puncturing the image of the president as a take-charge leader, this will be, for many, the tipping point. At the very least, it will be the scene that everyone talks about. Moore doesn't show the whole seven minutes. Instead he lingers on the scene just long enough for the audience to daydream of Eisenhower, Reagan, Truman, Bush senior, Clinton, Nixon or Kennedy in that situation, and to imagine any one of them standing immediately, excusing himself and demanding to be put in touch with his national security team.

Assessing the merits of a political film is a tricky business. Obviously, its quality is partly a function of its power to persuade, but its persuasiveness is in the eye of the beholder. Yet there are other things to consider: The movie's passion. Its serious purpose. Its tone. Its mix of words and images, and the way both linger in the mind. There's the way the movie fashions its arguments, and the cumulative effect the experience provides -- what you feel walking out, what you think about the next day. By all these measures, "Fahrenheit 9/11" is Michael Moore's best film.

Certainly, it's a career landmark, the film that signals his transition from political entertainer to political thinker, from propagandist to idiosyncratic journalist, from colorful gadfly to patriot. If "Bowling for Columbine" was a step, this is a leap, in which Moore vaults past Will Rogers into some territory all his own. In the 90-year history of the American feature film, there has never been a popular election-year documentary like this one.