Michael Moore’s ‘Fahrenheit 11/9’ turns up the heat on Trump
It has been fourteen years since American documentarian Michael Moore delivered Fahrenheit 9/11, his Cannes-winning takedown of former President George W Bush’s reaction to the September 11 terror attacks of 2001. Since then, he has tackled the health system (Sicko), the economy (Capitalism: A Love Story) and United States foreign policy (Where To Invade Next). Yet, none of these feel quite as urgent as his latest film, Fahrenheit 11/9.
With the title a sly nod to his earlier film – as well as a reference to November 9, 2016, the night of the last US election – it looks at the divided nation of America that led to Donald Trump’s admission into the White House. While Moore questions just how a wealthy tycoon could be elected president, the movie is not a reaction against Trump in the way Fahrenheit 9/11 dealt with Bush.
“That is not the film I set out to make, even though I do realise people say: ‘It’s Michael Moore’s Trump film’,” says the director, wearing his trademark cap when we meet in London’s Mayfair Hotel. “It’s more about the era that we live in, how we got here. He didn’t create the trouble that we’re in.” It’ll just be a lot worse, he adds, because Trump has set about dismantling things like the recent overhaul of the American healthcare system.
Moore doesn’t just tear into the Republican Trump administration, but the Democrats, too. “I have to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, even if the truth hurts,” he says. He calls the Democrats “a loser party”. “Basically, we’re without parties right now in the United States. Trump has destroyed the Republican Party. And the Democratic Party is inept, impotent and ineffectual.”
Ex-President Obama is taken to task for an incident in Moore’s hometown of Flint, Michigan, after the local drinking water supply became contaminated in 2014, leading to a public health crisis. The blame fell on the state’s governor, Rick Snyder, and when Obama gave a press conference where he drank a glass of water to prove the Flint supply was safe, Moore was left aghast at this PR stunt. “It just stuck a knife in the heart of everybody in Flint.” While some critics have argued Fahrenheit
11/9 is too scattershot – bouncing from Trump to Snyder – there was sound reasoning, says Moore. “We had a mini-Trump for governor. Four years before Trump announces [his run], we had Rick Snyder. So we got that coming attraction for what it was going to look like, for the rest of the country, when somebody decides he’s going to be an autocrat.” The film goes on to give a stark warning about the rise of fascism in 1930s Germany, with comparisons to today. Is he comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler? “What I am saying is not so much the comparison between Trump and Hitler, but the comparison between us and the people of Germany at that time.” In particular, Trump’s sly deriding of the media as “fake news”.
It’s not all doom-and-gloom: Moore finds hope in the teenagers who campaigned for gun-control. “The good thing ... is that since Obama’s election in 2008, 32 million 17-yearolds turned 18 and became voters. More young people are getting involved.” After all, it’s their world, we’re just caretakers.
Fahrenheit 11/9 is in cinemas across the UAE
The film gives a stark warning about the rise of fascism in Germany in the 1930s, with comparisons to today