In Trump’s rise, Michael Moore sees the hallmarks of Hitler
TORONTO » At the premiere of Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 11/9,” the filmmaker’s impassioned and portentous documentary about Donald Trump and the conditions that led to his presidency, Moore brought to the stage several Parkland, Florida, students who appear briefly in the film. “Generation of hope!” called out an audience member.
“No, I’m against hope,” corrected Moore. “Hope was back then with Obama. I’m for a generation of action.”
Moore’s latest film is, on the surface, predictable. That the 64-yearold activist filmmaker would turn his camera on Trump’s rise wouldn’t surprise anyone. What might is how much he also turns it on Democratic leaders, President Barack Obama and even himself. “This movie is about us as much as it is about Trump,” he said in a recent interview as his New York office where he was frantically putting the finishing touches on “Fahrenheit 11/9.” Outside a chalkboard quoted Walt Whitman: “Resist much, obey little.
“I want all of us to figure out: What was our role in not stopping this long ago? And who are we as Americans?” Moore says.
But even while Moore finds much to celebrate in the film — the Women’s March, the West Virginia teachers union strike, New York congressional candidate Alexandria OcasioCortez — he’s plagued by despair. He feels America is hanging tenuously by a thread, and that Trump is one national emergency — real or artificial — away from taking authoritarian control. In scenes that what will surely only enflame his critics, Moore thoroughly considers comparisons of Trump to Hitler, including one in which he plays audio of Trump at a rally over black-and-white video of a Hitler speech.
For Moore, the present moment is that precarious.
“I’m usually quite optimistic that I think a film can have an impact and that we’re going to get ourselves out of this, whether it’s the Iraq War, whether it’s mass shootings, whether it’s the collapse of the middle class. If I were completely honest with you, I can’t tell you that. This is not like anything we’ve been through,” Moore says, scratching his head beneath his ball cap. “I wonder, in the new world order of things — including the possibility of a two-term Trump — is this the last film?”
Just as Moore before the election warned liberals that they weren’t taking Trump seriously enough, “Fahrenheit 11/9” is an urgent call to action. “This is beyond voting to me,” he says. He wants people not to sleep at night after seeing it. He wants people in the streets.
Film critics in Toronto largely hailed it as Moore’s most vital film in years, and a “much needed punch in the gut,” though others wondered if his Hitler rhetoric wasn’t too extreme. More conservative reaction from outside the left-leaning movie world was, as expected, less enthusiastic. The Drudge Report blared in response to Moore’s Hitler comparisons for Trump: “This is war.”
The movie, which will be released nationwide Sept. 21, is a kind of sequel to Moore’s George W. Bush doc, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” which still ranks as the top documentary at the box office. The date this time refers to the early morning when Trump was declared the winner of the 2016 election.