I just got back from watching the movie. It’s going to take some time for everything to digest. I did really enjoy the film. One thing it will do. It will get everyone who watches it to think and discuss.
For me there was really no new information that we haven’t talked about in here to the Nth degree. We are definitely members of an “informed public” in here, whether leaning to the right or left. What was great about the movie was the presentation. The music, editing, and story-telling style of Moore really lays out a pretty strong case for his point of view.
It definitely adds an emotional element that I think we in here attempt to stay above. (I know that we get passionate, but we still all seem to keep it somewhat at bay to make our cases as rationally as possible). There were a couple of places in there where I was so emotional that I thought I was going to choke up. One was a woman whose family had a long and honorable association with the military. She got a letter from her son in Iraq stating how horribly this war was being executed, and claimed that he would vote to “remove that idiot from office” when he got back. A week later he was killed in a Blackhawk that got shot down. She was obviously pretty emotional about it… It was pretty hard to watch.
One of the other scenes that really got me was the an elderly lady in Iraq who lost 5 members of her family in a “precision bombing” airstrike, as well as losing her home. Her grief really hit me. She was crying so hard, wondering why god could allow such a thing to happen to her. I don’t want to spoil it anymore, but suffice it to say, it was just as hard to watch as the American woman who lost her son.
He tactfully resisted putting any direct footage of the towers and the planes crashing. He opted instead to focus on the people’s faces who watch in horror as it happened. People crying, praying, screaming, running. In some ways I think he was able to make his point even more strongly by not including what I thought would have been obvious… footage of the event from his title.
It is pretty painful to watch the president for the seven minutes he sat in that class after he learned of the attack. I have to wonder what he was going through his head. Moore had a few humerous moments with this concept that got a good laugh from the audience. I am curious why he didn’t get up right away. I would have thought that the president of the US, upon learning that we were under attack on our own soil, would have jumped out of his chair and started barking important orders.
Moore showed several clips of both Cheney and Bush making the claim that Iraq had something directly to do with the attack of 911 (something which they have denied recently), which pretty much squashes the arguments a few of you have made about “finding one instance” where they have tried to directly link Saddam with the attack.
All in all a good film. A lot more subdued than his previous films. Moore’s roll, as reviewers said, was a lot smaller in this film, letting the footage itself tell the story. One thing that shocked me. I thought I would come to the 11am show to avoid the evening crowds at the theater, although I didn’t expect the evening crowd to be there for a documentary. I had a VERY long line to wait in, and as it turns out, they were all going to F911. Not only that, they put it in one of the really big auditoriums (seats over 400) and it was absolutely PACKED. At the end it received a rousing applause, whoops, whistles, and screams. I have never seen a film get a standing ovation that lasted through a portion of the credits in a THEATER! I have a feeling that the Bush people are going to be really busy doing damage control over this for a while, now that it is finally out. This is a film that they are going to wish would go away but probably won’t.
I would love to hear from others who saw it and what they thought of it.
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