SICKO - FACT OR FUN?
I always look forward to a Michael Moore film. Although I agree with him politically, I go less to have my on convictions verified, and perhaps pandered to, with the accompanying sense of moral outrage, than to have fun at the way he assembles the facts. Of course, there is also the accompanying sense of being sickened at the state of things that often keeps me from full enjoyment.
Speaking of sickened, I didn't quite expect the range of sicknesses that pervate his latest film, SICKO. Of course, I knew it was about the health care system, which actually has worked quite well for myself and those I know. But any film that begins with an image of W has got to have something bigger on its mind
As everyone knows by now, there is less of Moore in the film (Even I felt he went too far with the Charlton Heston sequence in BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE).. Neverless, although he is not as physically present, he still is our narrator. As such, lhe does well at comparing the various health care systems and arranging with facts, with both irony and paradox, in his exposure of the true shortcomings of our own system. When he does appear, he does so in the final sequence, where he takes a group of 9/11 rescuers who have suffered post 9/11 disabilities without adequate domestic care, to Cuba, whare they get better care, and seemingly cured. On the one hand, it is the most rigged scene in the entire movie. On the other hand, it has the strongest narrative flow. It reminds me of Ofrsn Welles" F FOR FAKE, his three part documentary on forgers and fakers, in which the final Picasso sequence was an expert piece of narrative storytelling, while the earlier two were rambling. Of course, the first two were true, while the last was utterly falso.
So, in the final analysis, I responded to SICKO less as a call to arms that as an advance in Moore's filmmaking - less him, greater economy, better editing, and a better command of stgructure and narrative flow.
I had fun.
Speaking of sickened, I didn't quite expect the range of sicknesses that pervate his latest film, SICKO. Of course, I knew it was about the health care system, which actually has worked quite well for myself and those I know. But any film that begins with an image of W has got to have something bigger on its mind
As everyone knows by now, there is less of Moore in the film (Even I felt he went too far with the Charlton Heston sequence in BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE).. Neverless, although he is not as physically present, he still is our narrator. As such, lhe does well at comparing the various health care systems and arranging with facts, with both irony and paradox, in his exposure of the true shortcomings of our own system. When he does appear, he does so in the final sequence, where he takes a group of 9/11 rescuers who have suffered post 9/11 disabilities without adequate domestic care, to Cuba, whare they get better care, and seemingly cured. On the one hand, it is the most rigged scene in the entire movie. On the other hand, it has the strongest narrative flow. It reminds me of Ofrsn Welles" F FOR FAKE, his three part documentary on forgers and fakers, in which the final Picasso sequence was an expert piece of narrative storytelling, while the earlier two were rambling. Of course, the first two were true, while the last was utterly falso.
So, in the final analysis, I responded to SICKO less as a call to arms that as an advance in Moore's filmmaking - less him, greater economy, better editing, and a better command of stgructure and narrative flow.
I had fun.
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