Michael Moore Slams Obama Over Flint Water Crisis in His New Movie

Michael Moore’s latest documentary — titled Fahrenheit 11/9 in a rather sweaty (and calendar-stretching) attempt to create symmetry with Fahrenheit 9/11, his 2004 documentary take-down of then-President George W. Bush — premiered on Thursday night (September 6) at the Toronto International Film Festival. The stated intention of the film is an examination of the Trump election on 11/8/2016 (I guess the movie wants us to believe the heat got turned up just after midnight), how we got there, and what we’re going to do about it.

Rather than an exposé of Russian interference, voter suppression, James Comey and the FBI, or any of the dozens of things we’ve been going over for months, Moore’s film is distinctly his own, going down a lot of his usual rabbit holes, utilizing a lot of his familiar tactics, and employing that same smug, almost sing-song-y voice-over. He goes after Trump to a point, but in Moore’s estimation, Trump as a villain is so obvious as to be not worth lingering on.

Moore will focus on Trump for a while, his history of sexual harassment allegations, his racist statements about the Central Park 5, or his shady business dealings. But then something tangential will capture Moore’s imagination, be it the Flint water crisis or the Parkland school shooting, and he pivots away. In a grand sense, Moore’s film is about the progressive fighting spirit that will save us from Trump; be it the Parkland kids, the West Virginia teachers’ union, or the dozens of newly energized left-wing congressional candidates.

Since Moore’s film jumps around from subject to subject so much that it often seems like the demo reel for a TV series rather than a cohesive documentary, here’s a bullet-pointed list of the most typically Michael Moore (i.e. provocative/outrageous) moments:

• The first 15 minutes are essentially an extended “I told you so” to the left. From “Fight Song” on the soundtrack to mocking Hillary for her celebrity endorsers, Moore really rubs it in the face of any and everyone who assumed Hillary had the election in the bag. He even disingenuously acts abashed before cutting to footage of Fox News declaring on Election Night that Michael Moore saw the Trump surge coming in areas like his home state of Michigan.
• This includes a clip of Moore and Donald Trump as guests on Roseanne Barr’s old talk show. And if that sentence doesn’t send shivers down your spine …
• Moore blames Gwen Stefani for the Trump election. We’ve heard this chestnut before (a lot of Fahrenheit 11/9 is stuff we’ve heard before), but Moore takes us on the journey from Trump being pissed that NBC was paying Stefani more for The Voice than he was getting for The Apprentice, so declared himself a candidate for President as a petulant negotiating tactic. Then NBC fired him for making racist statements in his kick-off speech, his rallies in the South were well-attended, the national media fell in love with him (or with the ratings he drove), and it was off to the races.
• Moore really leans heavily on the innuendo about Trump wanting to have sex with Ivanka. This is mostly just a collage of Trump’s most awkward sound bites about Ivanka, the ones we’ve all heard before. It’s interspersed with some (contextually?) creepy posed photos of father and daughter when she was young.
• Moore goes all-in on the Hitler comparisons. Blowing right past the modern-day tsk-tsking about not making Nazi comparisons lightly, Moore lays out a decently convincing case that Trump is following the Hitler playbook to a tee.
• Moore really slams President Obama for his (in)action during the Flint water crisis. By far the most effective parts of the movie are when Moore pivots to a full-scale exposé of the situation in Flint. It’s no surprise, given his hometown connection. Moore exposes Governor Rick Snyder as nothing short of a mass criminal, gives voice to countless people in Flint (doctors, activists, aid workers), and brings the crisis home in ways only he can. Almost certainly, he should have made a documentary about Flint alone, though perhaps the calculus was to lure the people with Trump and then hit them hard with Flint. During the Flint sections, what surprises the most is Moore’s straight-ahead hammering of Barack Obama for his failure to federalize the Flint situation and, most damning, for appearing to make light of the crisis by twice theatrically drinking from a glass of Flint drinking water during speaking engagements on his visit to the city. Moore shows just how deflating that was to the activists and residents in Flint, and he connects that dot to low liberal voter enthusiasm in 2016.

Fahrenheit 11/9 being a Michael Moore film, it’s basically what you expect. Self-aggrandizing one moment, genuinely upsetting the next. It’s partially glib, partially galvanizing, and partially the stuff of which nightmares are made. Either dive in and grab onto what’s good or know yourself enough to stay away.

The 2018 Toronto International Film Festival is the unofficial kickoff to fall movie season. Oscar hopefuls abound as film critics and festival-goers get their first look at the movies we’re going to be seeing, talking about, and squabbling over for the next several months. And with Netflix showing up with EIGHT movies and Amazon Studios with four features plus one TV series premiere, Toronto is delivering quite the preview for what you’ll be streaming this fall. 

Where to stream Fahrenheit 11/9