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Charles Sts., Baltimore. Join this ongoing vigil on Dec. 30 from
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Michael Moore. (photo: Where to Invade Next)
Review:
Michael Moore's 'Where to Invade Next'
By Godfrey Cheshire,
RogerEbert.com
25 December 15
Michael
Moore’s surprising and extraordinarily winning “Where to Invade Next” will
almost surely cast his detractors at Fox News and similar sinkholes into
consternation. They get lots of mileage out of painting Moore as a far-left
provocateur who’s all about “running America down.” But his new film is all
about building America up, in some amazingly novel and thought-provoking ways.
In my view, it’s one of the most genuinely, and valuably, patriotic films any
American has ever made.
It
comes billed not as a documentary but a comedy, and the first joke is its
hilariously misleading title. You think it anticipates a stern, leftist
denunciation of American foreign policy. Instead, Moore tells us the Joint
Chiefs of Staff invited him to Washington, DC, to confess that all their wars
since “the big one” have been disastrous and ask his advice. He responds by
offering himself up as a one-man army who will “invade countries populated by
Caucasians whose names I can mostly pronounce, take the things we need from
them, and bring them back home to the United States of America.”
So,
wearing his trademark baseball cap and literally wrapped in the flag, he sets
off across the Atlantic searching out peoples to conquer who have things America
needs. Yes, he knows all of these countries have their own share of problems.
But he’s come, he says, “to pick the flowers, not the weeds.” And what a
bouquet he assembles.
First
stop is Italy, where he wonders why “Italians always look like they just had
sex.” He finds some reasons for that happy glow in talking to a 30ish
couple—he’s a cop, she works for a clothing company—who start enumerating all
the paid vacation time they get. The basic portion, decreed by law, is four
weeks, but when you add in government holidays and such, it comes closer to
eight. They use all this time to vacation in places like Miami and Zanzibar, so
there’s more than just sex (though we guess there’s plenty of that too) to
explain their radiant tans and satisfied smiles.
After
hearing about these citizens’ five months paid maternity leave, Moore invades
two Italian companies—one makes the famous Ducati motorcycles—where he
expresses mock-disbelief that such largesse could be good for business. But the
CEOs of both firms genially argue that it is. Workers getting such benefits—and
being allowed two-hour lunches where they can have home-cooked meals—makes for
a healthier, happier and more productive work force, they say. A union
representative notes that these gains have been hard-won and still require
struggle. But the picture of an industrial situation where all sides seem to
define success as cooperation, health and la dolce vita leads Moore to plant
the Stars and Stripes on one factory floor, claiming the idea for the U.S.A.
Before
considering the other countries he visits, it’s worth noting that all of this
works so well not only because of the ideas presented but also because Moore is
such a masterful comic storyteller and skilled polemicist. The film has a very
definite point of view, of course; that’s what sets it apart from the bland
pseudo-objectivity of our corporate news media. But Moore is clever enough to
avoid preaching to the choir by also voicing the doubts and skepticism that
Americans of other political persuasions would have.
After
Italy, several episodes focus on different aspects of education. In France, he
visits a provincial elementary school where the students’ hour-long lunches
look like they come from a top Parisian restaurant; this is not only cheaper
than the crap American kids are fed, the chef tells him, it’s also educational
since it teaches about food and healthy eating. In Finland, one of the film’s
most startling segments, Moore learns that until a couple of decades ago,
student performance was about as lame America’s still is. Then the Finns
decided to revolutionize their educational system. The reforms included
eliminating homework and standardized testing and giving students more autonomy
and free time. The result: Finland is now number one in educational rankings.
In
Slovenia, Moore inspects a system where a college education is essentially
free, even for Americans who have begun to flock there, unable to afford the
exorbitant costs at home. In Germany, the filmmaker’s look at health care and
benefits for middle-class citizens elides into the part of the film that’s most
likely to draw the ire of American right-wingers, since it concerns how not
just education but public policy in general decrees remembering and
understanding the Holocaust. Moore says he comes from “a great country that was
born in genocide and built on the backs of slaves,” and wonders whether such
recognition of historical sins might actually benefit the U.S. too.
Two
other countries prompt questions of crime and punishment. In Norway, Moore
investigates a prison system where rehabilitation rather than punishment is the
goal, even maximum security lock-ups are tailored to that end, and the maximum
sentence is 23 years (the country now has one of the world’s lowest murder
rates). In Portugal, he hears that eliminating all penalties for drug use and
treating it as a health-care issue instead has resulted in decreased use. He
also listens as three Portuguese cops talk movingly about how concern for
“human dignity” is the most important part of their training.
Two
underlying themes of the film, people power and women’s empowerment, converge
in the film’s final two segments. In Tunisia (the only non-European and only
Muslim country visited), he hears how, after the country’s 2011 revolution, the
new Islamist government tried to keep a guarantee of equal rights for women out
of the constitution, but bowed to include it after a massive popular uprising.
And in Iceland, Moore learns that the only financial company that escaped the
country’s massive financial meltdown was one founded and run by women, which
leads into a discussion of the transformative benefits that have come with
women gaining positions of power in government and business. Meanwhile, Iceland
also differed from the U.S. in sending many of their financial bad boys to
prison—an idea that the lead prosecutor says was modeled on America’s
prosecution of malefactors in the savings and loan scandal.
That’s
the kicker here. As he investigates one potentially useful idea after another,
Moore keeps discovering that many originated in the U.S. Thus he’s not stealing
from foreigners but reclaiming remedies that once belonged to us.
Anyone
who travels abroad a lot inevitably reflects that, due to many factors,
Americans are very insular, knowing far less about other countries than they
know about us. Better national media and education might mitigate this, but in
the meantime, Michael Moore has done thinking Americans a great service by
opening several fascinating windows on the world. One of his most accomplished
and entertaining films, “Where to Invade Next” is rich in ideas that deserve to
be discussed by liberals, conservatives and everyone else on the political
spectrum in the upcoming election year. Optimistic and affirmative, it rests on
one challenging but invaluable idea: we can do better.
C 2015 Reader Supported News
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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