I Give It One Star — One RED Star

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Seraphim Danckaert has a scathing review of Fahrenheit 9/11. He concludes that it is primarily disingenuous political propaganda, but he gets there by honestly judging the film as a film. Bravo, Seraphim.

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6 Responses to “I Give It One Star — One RED Star”

1. 

   pete Says:
   July 6th, 2004 at 3:35 pm

   i had a hard time getting to the same conclusion you did from this review.

2. 

   Chris J. Davis Says:
   July 7th, 2004 at 3:12 pm

   I would like to hear how you came to a different conclusion. I mean Seraphim actually stated:

   In sidestepping these important questions, Moore’s film leaves the realm of documentary and becomes mere politics, if not disingenuous.

   And then later:

   As all decent propaganda, Fahrenheit 9/11 will have exposed (part of) the problem, and then rallied the people to forget the lesson, overlook the implications and strike down something only tangentially related as a full solution.

   So how did you interpret these words, that allowed you to come to a different conclusion?

   This is all very interesting to me.

3. 

   Chris J. Davis Says:
   July 7th, 2004 at 3:17 pm

   Sorry I forgot to begin with this excerpt from Seraphim:

   No, no. It’s worth five bucks for a matinee show — that’s for sure — but it’s just not film at its best.

   I would say that the above quote, along with my previous excerpts seem to support Basil’s conclusion, which is the same one that I draw from reading his article.

4. 

   pete Says:
   July 7th, 2004 at 4:48 pm

   whoops. i don’t mean that i don’t see how Basil arrived at his conclusion in agreement with Seraphim. what i really meant to say was that i didn’t find the film to be entirely bad, in spite of it being propaganda in many ways. but part of this, i imagine, is that I’m more inclined to be prejudicial toward Moore’s perspective than that of a more conservative person. sorry for the confusion.

5. 

   Chris J. Davis Says:
   July 7th, 2004 at 5:17 pm

   Oh hey, no problem good to have that cleared up though.

6. 

   basil Says:
   July 8th, 2004 at 1:35 pm

   I have not seen the film, so I cannot determine whether his judgment is accurate. I simply found his critique to be very good and strong on actually judging a film on its merits. I despise it when people dismiss art out of hand without actually experienceing the piece in question. It is so dishonest. Once I have seen the film, I will let you know if I agree or not.

   However, I may never see the film, since Moore always reminds me of a loud, drunk version of Fu Manchu Bruce — Wilmore natives know — without the Christian sensibility.