The fact that practically all of these films are documentaries isn't surprising; what's more notable is their extreme one-sided affiliation. An overwhelming majority of these movies lean far to the left, either espousing progressive values in general or, in some instances, directly setting their sights on the controversial president currently occupying the White House.
This dichotomy isn't entirely unexpected. As recently noted in the newsweeklies, while the right-wing has done an exemplary job of using Internet resources to their benefit (e.g., blogs, e-mail recipient lists), they still lag far behind when it comes to motion pictures. Even acknowledging Hollywood's liberal slant, the right's inability to tap into this huge opportunity for pushing their agenda can be verified by a trip to Amazon.com, the Internet's top site for DVD purchases. Searching for political pictures that have been released during the past four months (or are set to be released in the upcoming weeks before the election), my quest turned up 17 left-wing movies and only two right-wing films. And we're not simply talking about obscure flicks buried deep within the bowels of the Amazon site: A run-through last week of the 100 best-selling DVDs revealed that seven of the 17 made the cut.
The big question, of course, is whether these movies are being purchased by liberals who like to repeatedly witness the insidiousness of the present administration being exposed by intrepid moviemakers, or by undecided voters hoping to uncover some truths before they're forced to mark their ballots. Impossible to say, but either way, the choices are plentiful.
One of the new titles needs no introduction. Fahrenheit 9/11, the Gone With the Wind of political exposes, has been in the news since its Cannes premiere last spring; given its hefty box office and current best-seller status on DVD, it hardly needs another push in this space.
The title Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry should also be familiar to moviegoers since it opened in hundreds of theaters nationally (including two in Charlotte) on October 1. Yet it made its home debut a mere 18 days later, surely some kind of record for fastest theater-to-DVD turnaround -- and an obvious indicator that the main reason for this film's existence isn't to line the pockets of its producers but to allow American citizens access to the real John Kerry. On that front, the movie accomplishes its mission: Director George Butler makes it clear that Kerry is more honorable, more courageous and more decisive than the criminal currently occupying the White House, illustrating in detail how the soft-spoken Massachusetts intellectual went from being a Vietnam War hero to a morally conscientious protestor of the conflict. Voters who've been duped by those preposterous Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads concocted by weaselly John O'Neill (seen here in a vintage clip getting one-upped by Kerry on The Dick Cavett Show) may be interested to learn that Richard Nixon's office had formally tapped O'Neill to run a smear campaign against Kerry; indeed, the most sobering aspect of the film is its ability to subtly highlight all the uncanny -- and frightening -- parallels between then and now, in effect reinforcing the famous adage that those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.
Another documentary that played Charlotte -- and will be available on DVD October 26 -- is Control Room, the eye-opening documentary about Al-Jazeera, the Arab news network that's been tagged "Osama bin Laden's mouthpiece" by those in the Bush administration. Director Jehane Noujaim meticulously builds the case that the Arab station is no more jingoistic than our own FOX News Network in presenting its version of the Iraq war and that, in many instances, it's more honest and responsible in presenting what's really going on over there. By not editing its raw footage of the battles and the resultant American and Iraqi casualties (as opposed to the censorial policy of US news channels), the network serves as a frontline witness to the atrocities being committed in the name of democracy, and its employees are presented as conscientious journalists who understandably have a rooting interest in the future stability of the region. Noujaim's primary interview subjects -- US Press Officer Lt. Josh Rushing (whose candidness later landed him in hot water with his superiors) and Al-Jazeera reporter Hassan Ibrahim (formerly with the BBC) -- are both interesting and articulate, yet it's the words of one Al-Jazeera newsroom staffer that perhaps hint at the state of surrealism that prevents Bush from being unanimously denounced by this country as a war criminal: "The whole war actually is like an American movie. You know the end. You know who's the hero. You know the bad guys; they're going to die. But you still watch because you want to know how it's going to happen."
Control Room isn't the only movie that explores the media's role in the present political climate -- there's also the straight-to-DVD Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War On Journalism, which debuted last July yet still ranks on Amazon's Top 100 list. One scene in director-producer Robert Greenwald's film is a real blood-boiler: odious FOX News commentator Bill O'Reilly verbally lashing out at an amiable young man who had lost his dad on 9/11 but who disagrees with the warmongers in the White House -- an unpardonable sin in O'Reilly's beady eyes. It's a disturbing sequence, just one of countless in this film that hammers home the point that media mogul Rupert Murdoch's FOX network has never been anything more than a mouthpiece for the Bush administration. Of course, any thinking American already knows this -- even more than Fahrenheit 9/11, this is a partisan piece that largely reiterates what's already been stated many times. Still, that doesn't diminish the impact of the film's message, which is that such blatant propaganda has no right being passed off as objective journalism. Incidentally, Greenwald has proven to be a one-man cottage industry when it comes to new DVD titles that lambast the present administration, as he's also behind three other current home theater hits: Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War; Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election (2004 Campaign Edition); and Unconstitutional: The War On Our Civil Liberties.
Moving the battle further behind the scenes, Bush's Brain focuses on the man who's often been tagged this nation's "co-President." Based on the book Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential by James C. Moore and Wayne Slater, this depressing yet worthwhile documentary examines the entire career arc of Bush's chief advisor -- and confirms the suspicion among many of us that Karl Rove is indeed the most morally decrepit member of an administration that's bursting at the seams with vile characters. Rove has never met a nasty campaign tactic he didn't like, and this film shows how he used the foulest methods available to discredit various candidates' opponents (Ann Richards, Max Cleland, John McCain, among others) without any regard for the careers -- and, in some cases, lives -- he destroyed along the way. Both Democrats and Republicans alike line up in this film to diss Rove, and the movie concludes with a powerful 10-minute episode that eloquently focuses on one American family that lost a loved one to this ill-advised war. In short, this segment does something that Bush, Rove and their lackeys have repeatedly failed to do: treat the US casualties as individual human beings rather than as statistical fodder for the re-election campaign.
The aforementioned titles should appease plenty of Democrats and open-minded Independents. But standing on the other side of the political spectrum is George W. Bush: Faith In the White House, which was released on DVD the same day as Fahrenheit 9/11 but which hasn't come close to matching the popularity or success of Michael Moore's film. Billed on the DVD case itself as "An Alternative Program To Fahrenheit 9/11," the movie portrays Dubya as an emissary from God, handed the presidency by the Lord (rather than his Supreme Court cronies) so that he may rally the nation against evildoers of all stripes (presumably, that includes Democrats). A screener wasn't available before deadline, but in a New York Times piece, Frank Rich concludes that the film's most startling revelation is "the inability of a president or his acolytes to acknowledge any boundary that might separate Mr. Bush's flawed actions battling "against the forces of evil' from the righteous dictates of God. What that level of hubris might bring to a second term is left to the imagination, and Faith In the White House gives the imagination room to run riot about what a 21st-century crusade might look like in the flesh."
As for other right-wing movies beyond Faith In the White House, they've primarily only been screened at Republican fundraisers, though I imagine a couple might be available through direct-mail from the distributors. Some have championed Bush while others have denigrated John Kerry; many, however, have ignored both men in favor of blasting Michael Moore. Reviews for these films were difficult to track down, though one person did state on his website, "They were all so bad, so boring, so right-wing, no one wanted to watch them... a sad waste of good videotape."
The name of that critic? Michael Moore.
