mrs. noz and i saw sicko last night.
i've already recounted my evolving history with michael moore when i reviewed fahrenheit 9/11 three years ago. if anything the anti-moore conservative backlash i mentioned is even stronger now. people on the left, even moore fans, don't seem to attach as much importance to moore as i see among right wing moore haters. he's just a filmmaker. his popularity comes from making films that plug into what people already feel. he's not a particularly powerful person by any stretch of the imagination.
i'm no longer a huge fan, but i still have respect for moore as a filmmaker. "sicko" proves once again that he has a real talent for making polemic documentaries. moore's talent comes from his ability to use the footage to construct a compelling political argument that is also entertaining and fun to watch. moore's cleverness is making a funny film even when he's dealing with unfunny topics like the american health care system.
"sicko" is pure moore. it's a compelling and entertaining indictment of the u.s. health care industry. but it's also got all the problems of a typical michael moore film. moore himself is on camera quite a lot, which seems unnecessary for a subject matter that really isn't supposed to be about him (one of the strengths of F911 was how moore disappeared in the second half of the film, letting his critique of the iraq war stand on its own). that much camera presence only adds to moore's reputation for self-aggrandizement when he is such a presence in the film.
moore's other big problem in sicko is its idealization of other countries. moore is very good at examining the problems in american society, but his critical eye never seems to focus on other countries. this is only really a problem after the film is mostly finished examining the u.s. system and when it looks abroad to compare the u.s. system with other systems. in that segment moore clearly over-idealizes french and cuban society. make no mistake, i think the u.s. health care system is a disaster (as someone once said, the u.s. health care system, isn't about health, it doesn't care, and it's not a system), worse than virtually everyone else's in the developed world. when he goes to canada and britain he focuses on the health care system. even though the canadian and uk segments are not particularly critical, they are at least on-topic.
but in france, the film meanders onto other topics--like the generous vacation leave guaranteed by french law, day care, and the 35 hour work week. and those things, in turn, raise a whole host of other issues that are clearly beyond the scope of the film. (like, for example, the fact that the 35 hour work week is quite controversial in france, and is blamed for some of the country's economic woes). it also would have been nice (and fairer) if he profiled french people who were not well off. if the people in the housing projects north of paris have better health care than ordinary americans, then that would be a significant point in moore's favor. instead of going that route, he focuses instead on well-off american expats, hardly a representative sample of the people in the french system.
the cuban segment probably will be criticized for not listing the evils of castro's regime (moore actually makes fun of that attitude in "sicko"). i don't have a problem with that. the film is about health care, so there's nothing wrong with moore focusing only on cuban health care. and yet, he is willing to wander off topic in cuba when it suits his purposes--when moore takes the sick 9/11 first responders who accompanied him to cuba to a cuban firehouse. it's a touching moment and gosh those cuban firefighters sure are nice, but how is it relevant to the issue of health care? if moore wanted to make a film examining how cuba or cubans under castro are different from the usual stereotype, that really should be a different film. it doesn't really belong in a film that is supposed to be about health.
finally, there's the issue of accuracy. every moore film since "columbine" has ignited a firestorm of claims of alleged inaccuracy. the moore-haters seem to pick through his every film with a fine-toothed comb in an attempt to discredit him. sometimes they have a point, but as i said in my F9/11 post, the things they get him on always seem to be to be minor. in any case, to moore's credit, he does make an effort to engage his critics. when the criticisms start, moore's site is pretty good at posting responses (often with citations). the backup for the statistics mentioned in the film are already up here.
the bottom line with "sicko" is that it's entertaining and effective as an attack on the u.s. health care system. even the "sicko" critics that i've read thus far are focusing more on moore's preference for a single-payer system than on his specific criticism of u.s. health care (e.g.). and yet, in my opinion, the film does a very good job illustrating just how useless the american health care insurance industry is. even if you don't buy moore's embrace of the canadian, british, french or cuban systems, it's hard for me to imagine anyone embracing the mess of what we've already got.
