Check out MTV’s scathing review of Michael Moore’s “Sicko,” and then compare it to The N&O’s review on Sunday. MTV’s Kurt Loder calls Moore’s movie about American health care “breathtakingly meretricious.” The N&O’s J. Peder Zane admits that Moore is “flagrantly dishonest,” but he seems to be saying Moore’s dishonesty is mitigated by the deeper truths the filmmaker is exposing, sort of a Rigoberta Menchu defense:
Moore’s films are aimed not at the head but at the heart — a point that often gets lost in the furious arguments over the “facts” he presents. His work is grounded not in ideas but in emotions.
While Loder cites the flagrant misrepresentations in “Sicko,” and contrasts it with the more truthful “Dead Meat,” a 2005 expose of the Canadian single-payer health care system, Zane quotes several academics who try to put Moore’s concocted documentaries into some kind of reform tradition:
But Tom Rankin, director for the Center of Documentary Studies at Duke University, says Moore’s work follows “a long reform tradition in documentary work in which filmmakers don’t try to show all sides of the issue, but their side, in order to get people to act.”
Even the headlines on the two reviews are instructive. The MTV’s is “‘Sicko’: Heavily Doctored: Is Michael Moore’s prescription worse than the disease?” The N&O’s headline is “Moore keeps his finger on our hot buttons: His incendiary films spark debates that, oddly, bring us together.” Ah, yes, the “being irresponsibly controversial is good” because it “sparks debate” argument. Tell that to Ann Coulter.
(h/t MK)
