The Seattle Times: "Fahrenheit 9/11" takes a torch to the Bush administration

The Seattle Times: Arts & Entertainment: "Fahrenheit 9/11" takes a torch to the Bush administration: "OK, just for a moment, can we all forget about the controversy and hatred and invective and accusations swirling around Michael Moore's fiery political documentary about the Bush administration's war on terror, 'Fahrenheit 9/11'? And instead of focusing on Bush and Moore, and our complicated feelings toward both of them, just for a second, let's pay attention instead to someone you've likely never heard of: Lila Lipscomb, a gentle-voiced citizen of Flint, Mich., who proudly unfurls an American flag outside her modest home every day, and whose grief gives Moore's film its soul.

How you respond to "Fahrenheit 9/11" will, of course, have much to do with your own political persuasion — those already convinced of the wrongs of the Bush administration will enter the theater ready to embrace the film; those opposed likely won't see it at all. But in any case, the film will make you angry, and you'll leave the theater wanting to talk, to argue, to do something. The faces of Lipscomb and a Sept. 11 widow, and a dead baby tossed into a pickup truck in the aftermath of an Iraq bombing, still haunt me, and will haunt you.

Moore, in his in-your-face way, has clearly lit a fire; it'll be fascinating to see what remains when the burning subsides."



By Moira Macdonald
Seattle Times movie critic

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