The documentary filmmaker Michael Moore has more than a few insufferable traits. He is manipulative, smug, and self-righteous. He has no interest in complexity. And he mocks the weak as well as the powerful. (Recall his derision, in “Roger and Me,” for an impoverished woman in Flint, Michigan, who slaughtered rabbits to make ends meet.) For all that, his movie about the American health-care system, “Sicko,” is a revelation. And what makes this especially odd to say is that the movie brings to light nothing that the media haven’t covered extensively for years.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Sicko
In the latest New Yorker, Atul Gawande nails Michael Moore and his movie:
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2 comments:
I happen to be a fan of Michael Moore. I have not seen "Sicko", nor have I read the review of his movie.
I am curious whether the reviewer simply finds fault with Mr Moore's alledged reporting of things that have been reported many times before, or whether the reviewer is standing up and saying loud and clear that Mr Moore is wrong.
I've only seen "Bowling for Columbine" and "Farenheit 9-11" and the criticisms of those movies have been all sorts of reasons but not of them because what he had to say was wrong or a lie.
I wonder if it's possible that people get angry about Mr Moore because they can understand what he has to say, as opposed to the lies and swill that comes from the mouths of politicians and corporate leaders.
Jack
I thought Sicko was good -- a revelation, as Gawande says. I liked Farenheit okay too. But I also think, as Gawande says, that he's manipulative, smug, and self-righteous, and that he oversimplifies the issues. He is a polemicist, not an analyst. That's not meant as a criticism. Polemics is fine, just so long as it's not confused with balanced analysis.
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