Michael Moore, the rambunctious American filmmaker, brings to his craft a skeptical mind, a jaundiced eye and a goofy sense of humour, the very qualities that have informed his documentaries on current affairs since 1989, when Roger & Me was released to a wave of adulation.
In his latest documentary, the provocatively-titled Where To Invade Next, which opens in Canada on February 26, Moore “invades” nine countries and one city, all in the service of improving American society.
Contrary to what he critics may think, Moore is not an unpatriotic subversive, but a high-minded reformer who can’t keep still in the face of injustice and stupidity. Wearing his trademark baseball cap and unflattering baggy clothes, which lend him the appearance of a homeless person, and brandishing his camera, he’s a colossus who bestrides the world.
Concerned with the troubling state of affairs in his country, Moore focuses his attention on the United States before setting off on his journey of discovery to Europe and the Middle East. Police brutality, home foreclosures and miscarriages of justice are the topics he raises to illustrate his thesis that something is terribly amiss in contemporary America.
Casting aspersions on America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, he appoints himself as its goodwill ambassador as he embarks on his fact-finding trips. At each destination, he plants the Stars and Stripes.
Italy, his first “target,” provides him with the “ammunition” he needs to convey a reasonably convincing argument. On the basis of conversations with an athletic middle-aged couple, the owners of two factories and a pregnant woman, he concludes that Italians are better off than Americans. Workers are paid well and receive generous benefits, in sharp contrast to the prevailing situation in the United States.
In France, Moore is flabbergasted by the wholesome gourmet meals high school students are fed at school cafeterias. “No slop here on a plastic tray,” he exults. And no sugary soft drinks or fries either. He also admires France’s social welfare system, its financial commitment to the arts and its insistence on mandatory sex education courses in schools (which keep teenage births at far lower levels than in the United States).
Travelling to Finland, Moore marvels at its seemingly excellent education system, which frowns upon homework, standardized tests and private schools. Moore’s foray into Slovenia — which he describes as a “magical fairy-tale land” — bowls him over as well. He’s impressed by the absence of tuition fees at universities — which have attracted Americans who are still paying off student loans –and he’s amazed that students succeeded in toppling a government that was bent on phasing in such fees. With George W. Bush in mind, Moore takes great delight in learning that the Slovenian alphabet is missing the letter W.
In a tacit critique of the United States, he congratulates Germany for its success in maintaining a thriving middle class, modern factories and a vibrant culture of memory. The average German worker has no need to hold a second job. Workers sit on the boards of corporations. And in a reference to the Nazi period and the Holocaust, he points out that Germany doesn’t whitewash its past. By contrast, he claims, the United States shrinks from its history of enslaving Africans and oppressing Indians. “Why do we hide from our sins?” he archly asks. This claim, though, is not entirely true.
Continuing his trip, Moore discovers that the possession of soft and hard drugs is not a criminal offence in Portugal. To his amazement, he learns that decriminalization has resulted in a decrease of drug use. Moore is further flabbergasted by the news that the abolishment of capital punishment has not led to a spike in the crime rate. In Norway, Moore is introduced to a prison system that relies on rehabilitation rather than vengeance. It’s exactly what the United States needs, he suggests.
He holds up Tunisia as a model of progress. Abortion clinics are funded by the government and women’s rights have been enshrined in the new constitution.
Observing that Iceland elected the world’s first female president, Moore argues that nations with females at the helm are better governed politically and economically. He cites an example: Icelandic bankers who nearly bankrupted the country in 2008 were packed off to jail, while their American counterparts faced no such justice.
In closing, Moore travels to Berlin to tell us that hope springs eternal. If the hated Berlin Wall could fall, he says, so can America’s deficiencies be cured. Right now, he says, the American Dream is alive and well in a profusion of countries other than the United States. But American can learn from its mistakes and missteps and dazzle the world yet again.
That’s the optimistic message that Where To Invade Next resoundingly hammers home.