This movie tries to deconstruct Michael Moore. I saw it twice to give it a fair chance to get its point across to me, and it actually made me understand and like Michael Moore better.
At this point I should tell you my stance towards MM: I consider his first movie Roger & Me a work of genius, but I disliked (sometimes intensely) his later docu-props. For example, I thought that the interview of Charlton Heston in Bowling For Columbine was atrocious, with Moore acting as a leftwing Jerry Springer. So I'm by no means an unabashed acolyte of Moore.
The makers of "Manufacturing Dissent" (an allusion to another, but great, Canadian documentary, "Manufacturing Consent") have taken more than a page from Michael Moore's book. The documentary is stylistically an eerie clone of Moore's movies, which begs the question whether imitation isn't the most honest form of flattery. It constantly brings in new points (without ever solving the old ones) and fresh scenes, which makes the movie interesting to watch but difficult to follow. Like Moore, it uses the tactic of "the more mud you throw, the more will stick".
On balance, the movie recycles some criticisms of Moore, and fires a barrage of new, but untenable (and often ludicrous) ones. That's simply not good enough.
To give one salient example: we see a college thespian claiming that Moore fabricated a scene from Roger & Me, where a satellite van gets stolen by an unemployed auto worker before a live Ted Koppel broadcast from Flint. So how come no-one, for example someone from Nightline, noticed until now? In all likeliness the claim of the fabrication was itself fabricated. The documentary should have investigated this, instead it takes the claim at face value and moves on to fresh accusations. That's propaganda, not journalism.
So what's the message? Michael Moore's everyman image is a carefully constructed role -- true to some extent, but really nothing new. He has a number of detractors, who are often pretty unpleasant themselves (such as the snooty film critic who proudly states that he instantly disliked Michael Moore from the moment he walked into the studio until he "waddled on out" -- what an incredibly biased and shallow statement from a professional critic). The makers of the movie purport to have started this movie as fans -- so why do they rely so heavily on the material of his rightwing critics? I got the impression that Moore sees himself as being on a crusade not just against the political right, but also against ivory-tower leftwing intellectuals. He wants to reinstall a street credibility to the political left. With detractors such as Debbie Melnyk of Manufacturing Dissent, I choose to praise Moore rather than to bury him.
At this point I should tell you my stance towards MM: I consider his first movie Roger & Me a work of genius, but I disliked (sometimes intensely) his later docu-props. For example, I thought that the interview of Charlton Heston in Bowling For Columbine was atrocious, with Moore acting as a leftwing Jerry Springer. So I'm by no means an unabashed acolyte of Moore.
The makers of "Manufacturing Dissent" (an allusion to another, but great, Canadian documentary, "Manufacturing Consent") have taken more than a page from Michael Moore's book. The documentary is stylistically an eerie clone of Moore's movies, which begs the question whether imitation isn't the most honest form of flattery. It constantly brings in new points (without ever solving the old ones) and fresh scenes, which makes the movie interesting to watch but difficult to follow. Like Moore, it uses the tactic of "the more mud you throw, the more will stick".
On balance, the movie recycles some criticisms of Moore, and fires a barrage of new, but untenable (and often ludicrous) ones. That's simply not good enough.
To give one salient example: we see a college thespian claiming that Moore fabricated a scene from Roger & Me, where a satellite van gets stolen by an unemployed auto worker before a live Ted Koppel broadcast from Flint. So how come no-one, for example someone from Nightline, noticed until now? In all likeliness the claim of the fabrication was itself fabricated. The documentary should have investigated this, instead it takes the claim at face value and moves on to fresh accusations. That's propaganda, not journalism.
So what's the message? Michael Moore's everyman image is a carefully constructed role -- true to some extent, but really nothing new. He has a number of detractors, who are often pretty unpleasant themselves (such as the snooty film critic who proudly states that he instantly disliked Michael Moore from the moment he walked into the studio until he "waddled on out" -- what an incredibly biased and shallow statement from a professional critic). The makers of the movie purport to have started this movie as fans -- so why do they rely so heavily on the material of his rightwing critics? I got the impression that Moore sees himself as being on a crusade not just against the political right, but also against ivory-tower leftwing intellectuals. He wants to reinstall a street credibility to the political left. With detractors such as Debbie Melnyk of Manufacturing Dissent, I choose to praise Moore rather than to bury him.