Fahrenheit 11/9

An exceedingly hit-and-miss effort, Fahrenheit 11/9 follows Michael Moore as he explores the current state of American politics – with the emphasis placed on Donald Trump’s inexplicable rise to power. Filmmaker Moore does an absolutely stellar job of immediately drawing the viewer into the proceedings, as Fahrenheit 11/9 opens with an electrifying stretch detailing the buildup to (and results of) the 2016 presidential election (with this fascinating prologue capped off with a hell of a stinger as Moore the narrator asks, “how the fuck did this happen?”) From there, though (and perhaps predictably), Fahrenheit 11/9 segues into a meandering midsection that contains a seemingly equal number of effective and tedious sequences – with Moore’s ongoing emphasis on time-wasting digressions perpetuating the picture’s hopelessly erratic feel. (There is, for example, an ongoing subplot about the clean-water crisis in Flint, Michigan, with the majority of this incongruous material feeling as though it’s been pulled from an altogether different picture.) And although Moore does manage to pack the proceedings with a small handful of compelling moments (eg the director looks at the somewhat shocking degree to which the Democratic National Committee pushed Hilary Clinton for president, despite the fact that Bernie Sanders won several key ridings), Fahrenheit 11/9, which closes with a moving speech from school-shooting-survivor Emma Gonzalez, ultimately comes off as just another unfocused and exhaustingly overlong effort from a well-meaning yet seriously clumsy filmmaker.

** out of ****