FAHRENHEIT 11/9

FAHRENHEIT 11/9 is Michael Moore's latest agit-doc, purportedly focusing on the damage that the Trump presidency has done to democracy and freedom in the USA, and the rising risk of despotism.  Moore makes draws an explicit parallel between Trump and Hitler, and even lends credibility to this hyperbolic statement by interviewing Timothy Snyder - a professor of history at Yale and one of the foremost writers on fascism in Europe in the mid twentieth century.  But for the most part - and surprisingly - this isn't really a documentary about Trump at all.  Accusations of collusion with Russia are handled in a throwaway sentence at the start of the film.  Rather, Moore is far more concerned with the structural dysfunction in American politics that allowed Trump to come to power - and spends as much time criticising the Democratic party and Obama as Trump himself.  In fact, I was shocked to find no exploration of gerrymandering or voter suppression by the GOP, but plenty of exposure of the DCCC annointing candidates and trying to cut those deemed too left wing off at the knees.  To be sure, both are problematic but it seemed weird to focus on the one without the other.  Both stymie the democratic expression of the will of the people. Moore is more balanced when he returns to Flint Michigan to expose the water crisis - excoriating Governor Rick Snyder but also the flaccid response of Obama. 

The overall thesis of the film seems to be that Trump is just the most extreme expression of what the GOP does - which is to pander to the rich.  But that the Democrats have cleaved too far to the centre to try and win elections and have ended up being as corrupt and pointless as the GOP. He therefore shines his spotlight on the new radical left - whether that be Democratic Socialists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - or most movingly the survivors of Parkland - who are tearing up the rule book and demanding radical change.

The result is a film that seems at times frenetic - jumping from one topic to another and then back again. But I admire the ambition to show how everything is joined up and systemic rather than just focusing on the egregious behaviour of Trump. That said, I continue to find Moore's stunts tiring - cheapening the force of his arguments. 

FAHRENHEIT 11/9 is rated R and has a running time of 128 minutes. It played Toronto and London 2018 and is now available to rent and own.

London Film Fest Day 12 - SUPRISE FILM - CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY

It took me a while to calm down enough to write this review. So far, it's been a pretty mediocre festival with not a single moment where I have had my breathe taken away by a movie. This stands in contrast with last year when films like THE WRESTLER and IL DIVO stunned me with their boldness. I was, therefore, pinning a lot on the Surprise Film and with some confidence, because in previous years Sandra Hebron had programmed NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and THE WRESTLER. On Twitter, the Facebook discussion boards, and in the auditorium before movies, regular festival-goers debated what the surprise movie would be. Would it be something mainstream like WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE or SHERLOCK HOLMES? Or would it be an Oscar-contender like AMELIA (before the bad reviews). As the lights went down we had an enigmatic opening sequence - some vintage TV footage teling us to be prepared for gruelling viewing. And then then titles told us that the Surprise Film was CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY. I was so angry I wanted to leave right then and there, but in a seat at the end of an aisle, that would've been almost as anti-social as Sandra Hebron's programming choice. The disappointment in the auditorium was audible.

I am still angry at having to watch this poorly constructed, poorly argued, patronising, highly personalised piece-of-shit documentary. Indeed, I'm still trying to figure out what Michael Moore was trying to document other than his own ignorance and self-proclaimed righteous anger. I'd always had my suspicions about him. Watching FAHRENHEIT 9/11 and SICKO, in the scenes where I actually knew something about the subject matter, I found him to be factually wrong at worst, and distorting at best. As a result, I never found his work credible. And now, here was a documentary very much on my home turf: in "real life" I'm an Ivy League Economics graduate with 10 years experience in finance. Now, don't get me wrong, despite the title of this blog I'm not a cheerleader for unfettered free markets, and much of the policymaking before, during and after the collapse of Lehman Brothers drew my criticism. We actually NEED a good documentary examining these issues. But Moore squanders his opportunity. Worse still, he doesn't even have good intentions.

CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY is poorly constructed. The single commonality among good documentaries is that they organise their material well. Typically hours of footage are shot and then whittled down to create a coherent story. CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY, by contrast, lacks focus, is scatter-shot, and seems to jump from one issue to another. Apparently, Michael Moore started making a rather different documentary before Lehman Brothers collapsed and the bail-outs began, and it shows. This movie feels like it was made without any clear plan. Is Moore critiquing Capitalism or is he trying to expose white-collar crime or is he just pulling stunts to entertain us? Nowhere is there a coherent discussion of any one topic. Sure he tells us a bit about white collar crime, but without the focus of ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM. He hints at rising indebtedness but without the focus of I.O.U.S.A. He's like a little kid with a pick-n-mix bag and without the balls and talent to sustain our interest in a complicated issue for two hours.

CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY is poorly argued. It starts of as a lament for the hollowing out of the US manufacturing base (as in Roger & Me). There is, underneath this, a genuine debate about free trade that does come under the banner of critiquing one kind of capitalism. Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has made this argument. But Moore isn't really interested in actually fashioning a balanced case but in hurling unfounded accusations. Moore then tries to posit a choice between capitalism (a term he never cares to define) and....er....what? He doesn't seem to understand that pure unfettered capitalism isn't the only type of capitalism on offer, just as documentaries aren't the only kind of feature. You can have capitalism with social protection, as we do in the UK, and the balance between free markets and social protection tilts further toward protection as you go into Continental Europe. But these are all variants on capitalism. What Moore calls socialism isn't really socialism but social market capitalism.

Even then, Moore can't quite bring himself to risk public opposition to his advocating socialism - a word that is held in more contempt in the US than in Europe - so he draws a bizarre opposition between Capitalism and Democracy. This is his most absurd step. Capitalism is an economic system and Democracy is a political system. The opposite of capitalism in communism. The opposite of democracy is not capitalism but fascism or communism or absolute monarchy.

As for individually misleading or factually incorrect statements, I cannot remember all the examples, but here's a classic case. Moore points to a better time, in the post-war era, when the USA was wealthy but also shared that wealth. He points to the 90% top rate of income tax, as if rich people were happily paying such a high marginal tax rate to further social cohesion. Well, as any fool knows, paying income tax, even at today's lower tax rates, is optional for the super-rich. Anyone eligible to pay such a rate will have employed a good tax lawyer and become an overseas resident, or actually moved to a tax haven. The super-rich are also super-mobile and thus high marginal tax rates are usually ineffective in raising tax revenues and don't actually result in higher distributions to the working classes.

Worst of all, CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY is patronising. If Michael Moore really cares about the working classes shouldn't he care enough to craft a sensible, balanced, well-thought out argument? Why patronise them with cheap stunts like driving a truck up to the headquarters of Goldman Sachs and asking for the money back? He shows as much contempt for his desired audience as the plutocrats he criticises.

CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY played Venice, Toronto and London 2009. It was released in the US last month and in Canada earlier this month. It opened in Austria and Iceland this weekend. It opens in Norway next week and in Australia, Lebanon, and Singapore on November 5th. It opens in Germany on November 12th, in Denmark on November 20th and in France, the Netherlands and Finland on November 27th. It opens in Japan on December 5th, in Slovenia on December 31st, in Belgium on January 6th and the UK on February 26th.

London Film Fest Day 8 - SICKO - more polemic than substance

This review comes from El Capitain, who can usually be found here. El Capitain has extensive experience as a healthcare consultant and so is far better able to comment on this movie than I am....

Michael Moore does one thing well - and that is pulling at the heart-strings with (often factually questionnable) polemic. But the formula is getting old. His dumb stunts in Sicko are boring - his carefully staged interviews are predictable - and he fits in less "right to reply" than ever before. His analysis of the problems in the US healthcare system is incomplete and weak - his look at other healthcare systems (like France, UK and Cuba) is weaker - and he has no proposed solution to the problem he engages with.

Sicko will doubtless be a shock to the great unwashed of the USA - who don't even have a passport, far less having been abroad. Yes, socialised systems do exist in Europe, and yes, they do work better and cheaper than the (corrupt) American system. And in France, just about everything is socialised, and they have really employer unfriendly employment laws because of a really politicised workforce. That's why they have over 10% unemployment. But we all knew that, right? At least, I did.

And yes, the healthcare payment system is the USA is basically corrupt - with HMOs using any excuse to not pay for treatment - and penalising people living with long term conditions with co-pays, excesses and denial of service. Hence healthcare outcomes in America suck ass - and are in fact lower than many Cuban healthcare indicators. But is that news to anyone here? Don't our papers, civil servants, doctors, NHS employees and politicians already demonise the American system? Isn't "Americanised" just another word for "immoral and demonic" in the NHS?

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Perhaps I'm being unfair. I'm an expert in healthcare - I've worked with the NHS my whole career. I've led up research projects on healthcare provision and payment worldwide, and benchmarked them to the UK system. I know more than the average Joe Bloggs in the street - and maybe that's why Moore's film was so yawnworthy and throwaway. Perhaps I was bored with references to the Cuban healthcare "miracle" because I already knew a whole lot about it - others may be surprised that Cuba is ahead in healthcare. It could be that I know too much about the foibles of the NHS and the French healthcare systems to be impressed by their positive portrayal. And maybe my wishing that Moore had investigated systems like Sweden and Denmark, where healthcare is localised, was just self-indulgent of me.

But then, isn't that what documentary making is all about? Investigating the facts from a broad viewpoint - looking in-depth at causes and factors and solutions? Moore cannot claim to have done that- and he's marred his work as a result. And that's a shame, because he has some good points. Cuba does have the best outcome to cost ratio out of any country - because they focus on preventative and community care - something US healthcare is sytematically misaligned to do. The UK does have far better health outcomes than the US for lower cost, because of its focus on primary care and health management - something a system with co-pays and excesses cannot hope to achieve. And yes, the French do benefit from more favourable employment laws - too favourable many might say - because of their militancy. But that isn't the whole picture.

The French healthcare system is on the verge of collapse because of patients being given too much choice, and electing to go straight into specialist care rather than through primary care. Healthcare in the UK is under considerable pressure because of overzealous financial reforms, stopping it from focussing on the basics. Cuba has excellent outcomes not just because they're socialised - but because they haven't the money to invest in acute care and therefore have no choice but to opt of prevention and community care - and because their population doesn't have the means to get fat on McDonalds. And not all French families are well off - as we saw from the La Haine style riots in the high density estates in the last year.

Not only that, HMOs like Humana and United Health aren't all bad. In terms of denying service, they are doing exactly what you'd expect from an insurer - trying to pay as little as possible. In countries with a less corrupt political system, where oversight is stricter, private provision and payment can work. Germany is a prime example - where a system of mixed provision and payment is in operation - yet the Germans have excellent health outcomes. Indeed, many UK health execs have been over to Kaiser Permanente to learn from them in terms of their approaches to care management. Humana and United are being invited over to work with NHS organisations to improve their processes, payment and use of data.

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Moore doesn't investigate any of these points. He doesn't systematically deconstruct the problems with the American system, other than saying that it's "for profit" and therefore must be bad. He doesn't suggest an alternative, apart from saying that the USA should "learn from others", presumably those with socialised systems. And he even manages to get his favourite subjects of 9/11 and Guantanamo Bay in there, for no really good reason.

Yes, there are some tear-jerking personal stories that are genuinely tragic. And yes, the polemic works well most of the time, and you do leave the cinema believing (rightly) that there is something very seriously wrong with the US healthcare system. But this isn't a documentary. It's not quite fiction either - but it certainly isn't an honest or serious examination of the subject. And the problem isn't that I'm an expert - it's that I'm not completely ignorant.

This film is aimed at people who know nothing of healthcare systems abroad - or foreign economies and cultures. It is gimmicky, full of holes, and will doubtless be panned by powerful right-wing Americans who will gleefully point out its flaws, thus discrediting its message. That's a shame. In my view, universal healthcare is too important a message to fluff - to crucial to be left to Michael Moore's half truths and heavy-handed moralising. It's never a good thing to leave a cinema thinking you could have done a better job. But I could have. I would have. Another opportunity missed by so-called liberals - another piece of fodder for Guardian readers to feel better about themselves for having a social conscience.

Disappointing.

SICKO played London 2007. It has already been released in Canada, Kuwait, Australia, Italy, Swizterland, Japan, France, Singapore, Argentina, Slovenia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Germany and Greece. It opens in Hungary, Finland and the UK later in October and in the Czech Republic, Russia and the Netherlands in November 2007. It opens in Brazil on January 25th 2008.