Fahrenheit 11/9

Fahrenheit 11/9 videos

Cast & Crew

Michael Moore

Self

Brooke Baldwin

Self

Ashleigh Banfield

Self

Steve Bannon

Self

Joy Behar

Self

Tasha Dixon

Self

X González

Self

Mark Halperin

Self

Michael Moore

Director

Michael Moore

Writer

Carl Deal

Producer

Michael Moore

Producer

Basel Hamdan

Executive Producer

Tia Lessin

Executive Producer

Luke Geissbuhler

Cinematographer

Jayme Roy

Cinematographer

Doug Abel

Film Editing

Pablo Proenza

Film Editing

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News & Interviews for Fahrenheit 11/9

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Critic Reviews for Fahrenheit 11/9

Audience Reviews for Fahrenheit 11/9

• Dec 18, 2018

  The broad strokes of the documentary are not wrong, but that's about all Moore has to offer here. He should have either lengthened this to a miniseries or made a more focused movie.

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  Super Reviewer
• Oct 21, 2018

  You may say that Moore digresses trying to talk about a good too many things, but the result is like a last chapter in a trilogy that began with Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11, wrapping up its thesis in a devastating (and understandably desperate) wake-up cry to a country that is being burnt alive.

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  Super Reviewer
• Sep 30, 2018

  Does muckraking filmmaker Michael Moore even matter anymore? That's the question in the wake of the tepid opening of his newest documentary, Fahrenheit 11/9, a spiritual sequel to 2004's Fahrenheit 9/11, which impressively grossed over $110 dollars (the next highest grossing doc is about $80 million away). Moore has been a loud progressive voice, a champion of the little guy, a provocative and some might argue deceptive filmmaker for three solid decades, but have we simply tuned him out? His last two movies (Where to Invade Next, Capitalism: A Love Story) have done middling business and he seemed to have lost a step. If anything can animate the Moore of old, it should be the stunning ascendancy of President Donald J. Trump. I was expecting a take-down of our 45th president, but Moore doesn't really go in for an extended catalogue of the mounting scandals, setbacks, and prevarications of the Trump Administration. It would be hard to keep up with the 27/7 news cycle that seems to fly from one Trump scandal or offensive statement to the next, creating an endless loop of scandals and headlines that can inure the public to negative attention (Trump is certainly counting on this as he games his base to disbelieve any and all negative coverage as "fake news"). By its a nature, a documentary takes a lot of time to fashion, and if Moore had simply made a two-hour catalogue of Trump outrage, it would have been instantly dated (he does sneak in some Helsinki footage of Trump cowing to Putin's version of events). To be clear, Moore criticizes Trump and his cronies for the lasting damage he feels they are inflicting upon democracy and civility, but this Fahrenheit sequel is really all about the American people, namely those who have grown apathetic or too complacent in the notion that society will be safe and sound without direct and responsive action. There's a renewed passion here that was solely absent in the last few Moore documentaries. Moore states that Trump is not an isolated incident but a symptom of bad actors unchallenged for too long. This includes the media and especially the Democratic Party, including the Clintons and President Obama. There is more time actually spent railing against the shortcomings and decision-making of Democrats than there is on the Republicans. Lest you think Moore is blaming anyone and everyone for the rise of Trump, he even points the finger at himself and his own complacency. He regrets the times he could have stood up and challenged Trump, like on Roseanne's daytime talk show in the 90s, or to his mouthpieces, like when he's chummy with Kellyanne Conway on election eve. Back when Trump was still a Democrat, Jared Kushner was a producer on Moore's 2007 doc, Sicko, which was also amazingly distributed by Steve Bannon's company. Moore argues he too fell into the trap of complacency, of assuming Hillary was going to win comfortably, that a self-serving, unqualified candidate such as Trump would never be elected president, that the sensible American people would set things right. Moore's film relives the slow, sickening realization of that fateful night by first crafting a montage of incredulous voices promising Trump had no chance (in a two-person race), and then he veers from the upbeat Clinton election party, complete with vaulted glass ceiling waiting to be ceremonially shattered. As the night wears on and tears give way, the glass ceiling would remain intact. It's a painful moment to relive for any person hoping for the alternative, and Moore wants his audience to remember that shocked, stomach-churning feeling so it can be prevented in the future. Moore's thesis is that the only hope for our society pulling out of its tailspin is for new blood to be injected into politics and government. The resulting two-plus-hours seems to throw a lot of anecdotes and selective statistics at the wall to see what sticks. We jump from a teacher's strike in West Virginia, to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as she canvasses before her upset in New York's 14th district, to the Parkland High School students staging their own resistance movement for gun control, to the Flint water crisis. It makes for a somewhat haphazard documentary because it feels more like its parts than the sum, losing a sense of momentum. Fahrenheit 9/11 had the Iraq War to act as a narrative focal point, and it was timely and tangible and raw. Fahrenheit 11/9 is missing that central drive, which is why it feels like it's too episodic. Thankfully his stunts and fitful attempts at humor, usually Moore's weakest aptitude, are kept to a minimum so as not to further dilute the urgency of his message. His best section on Flint could have been an entire movie unto itself. Moore's personal connections to Flint, Michigan run deep and he has featured the city in every documentary going back to his first daring film, 1989's Roger and Me. It feels like this beleaguered city can never catch a break. The government switched its local water supplies in 2015 and effectively gave every child in Flint lead poisoning, a condition that literally alters DNA and the DNA of future generations. This will affect the children of the children of Flint. It's that insidious and tragic. The corrosive water pipes were a result of opportunistic greed, of trying to create a new pipeline for donors to Michigan governor Rick Snyder. It's here that Moore sends up Snyder as a pre-Trump data point, a businessman with no experience elected to public office who took extra powers, blessed hand-picked emergency managers to circumvent local electoral choices, eschewed checks and balances, and installed cronies and crooked business partners into office. Snyder and his government knew about the lead poisoning for months and did nothing, and then they tried covering it up by telling doctors to doctor the numbers. It's this segment of the film that feels most impassioned, most excoriating, and most impactful. If these elected leaders could knowingly poison a generation of children for profit, it could happen to you next. It's here that Moore serves up his biggest criticism of Obama, who visited Flint after the water crisis gained national attention after months of suffering. He performs a stunt, which he swears was not a stunt, where he drinks a glass of Flint tap water to help his parched throat. You can feel the pained anguish of the Flint locals as one of their heroes, a man who was supposed to be a different politician, a man of the people, looks like another disingenuous politician. But of course there is still time to ridicule Trump and his narcissistic tendencies. Moore argues that Trump has been hiding in plain sight the whole time and we've just ignored all his bad behavior and warning signs. There's a searing montage of Trump's gross obsession with how attractive his daughter Ivanka is, from talking about her future breasts as a little baby, to saying on a talk show that if she wasn't his daughter he could see them dating. If you're going to vomit during this screening, it will be here. Trump's open admiration of dictators and strong men (he has said more positive things about Kim Jong-Un than John McCain) and his disdain for independent law and order, democratic norms, and American moral standing leads Moore to one apocalyptic conclusion. He warns that when, not if, some kind of terrorist attack happens and Trump demands new powers to combat this new reality, we will have willingly given away our democracy to a dilettante. Moore talks about shying away from direct Trump-as-Hitler comparisons but then throws up his hands in defeat and employs a few talking heads to make the connections more concrete. He even uses Trump rally audio and plays it over a Hitler speech, which was the funniest moment for me because of the bizarre dissonance (Trump is a much worse speaker). There will be people that tune out specifically because of the Hitler comparisons, deeming Moore an alarmist, which the man might agree with. He's trying to sound an alarm to wake everyone up out of complacency, to get out and vote, to run for office, and to be more involved in their government so that it's more representative of the 330 million people rather than an elite cadre of special interests with vast outputs of capital. Fahrenheit 11/9 is a call to action to Moore's ever-decreasing audience. It's emotionally affecting and persuasive at points but it's also too scattershot and lacking momentum, especially after Moore makes the conscious decision to keep Trump as a background presence, the latest malignant symptom of an apathetic voting public. Moore's central argument is that too many of us, himself included, became complacent and now our democracy is in peril from a wannabe tyrant who doesn't care about inflicting lasting collateral damage. If our country ever needed Moore, it would be now, but his time might have already passed as an influencer. The last time Moore was breaking through into the cultural conversation was with Sicko in 2007, years before the formation of the ACA. Since then we've seen the rise of social media, YouTube, and the instant commentaries of media old and new, all trying to one-up one another in expediency and exclusivity. Is Moore just another member of the old guard he laments has become obsolete? Fahrenheit 11/9 is better than I thought it would be but it still left me wanting more of Moore. But if his message is anything, don't count out Moore and the American people just yet, because with the right push, it can all come roaring back. Nate's Grade: B

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  nathan z Super Reviewer