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The Awful Truth: Michael Moore and Sicko
The main foundation of Moore’s work is, of course, humor, and that’s how he starts things off. Sicko opens with a clip of George W. Bush’s infamous pronouncement that Ob-Gyn’s “aren’t able to practice their love with women all across this country.” Bush’s idiocy never really ceases to be good for a laugh, but as his term and the occupation of Iraq drag on, the joke gets more and more wearying. Here the clip has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the film. For those wondering if Moore has learned anything over the last three years about how to structure an argument, look no further. As for other attempts at comic relief, Moore gets mileage out of the same kitschy Fifties industrial footage everybody’s been cribbing since The Atomic Café, pointless pop-culture references (a Star Wars scroll of all the ailments health insurance companies won’t cover) and a quickie montage reminiscent of the cartoon segment in Bowling describing American culture’s workaholism. It’s agitprop eye-candy. In the age of YouTube, when any “Buck Fush” T-shirt wearer with Photoshop or Final Cut Pro can remix pop culture detritus, a feature-length documentary investigation should deliver something a little more substantial.
More cheap irony comes in the form of a simple compare-and-contrast that Moore stretches over an interminable portion of the film’s running time. Documenting nightmare stories submitted to him by fans and others royally screwed by health insurance companies — a man forced to choose which finger to save after a workshop accident, a couple moving into their daughter’s home because of debts accumulated from astronomical health insurance costs, a multitude of people tightfisted by companies desperately looking to weasel out of paying hospital bills — Moore shows an astounding lack of faith in his best material. Instead of letting it speak for itself to profoundly implicate America’s damaged health care system, he uses some of his truest and most compelling footage against trips to Canada, England, France and Cuba to prove the superiority of federalized, socialized health care. These trips, featuring interviews with expats, doctors, and even some politicians, rely extensively on selective information and ribbon-on-the-box salesmanship. For example, presenting the fabulous societies of foreign lands, Moore documents only the well-to-do and how comfortably they live on the government payroll — the montage of a British doctor and his fine wines is jaw-droppingly egregious. Would audiences accept America to be portrayed in the same fashion, with complete neglect to the poor and underprivileged populations?
And that’s not even to speak of Moore’s inability to paint a full picture of universal health care. Such lapses point out the problems of Moore’s style. Overkill is a clear culprit — one wants to mentally reconstitute Sicko’s bloat as a witty, informative 15-minute segment on TV Nation addressing the differences between the US and Canada’s health care systems. But the reality is that Sicko is mostly gratuitous. There’s a brief section in which Moore studies the federal government’s construction of a corrupt privatized health care system starting in the Nixon administration and ending with contemporary congressmen and senators being bought by lobbyists to do that system’s legislative bidding. Not sacrificing his irreverent and shaming tone, Moore is at his strongest here, moving from personal stories of health care negligence or outright cruelty to its origin in government-private sector back scratching.
But this line of inquiry is dropped for the long compare-and-contrast section mentioned above, and the film never recovers. Sicko ends with several disgusting displays of self-promotion and phony flag-waving. Sailing to Cuba with non-government 9/11 rescue workers and firefighters who’ve contracted debilitating illnesses, Moore figures to get into Guantanamo Bay because — due to one of those insulting ironies of life — its enemy combatants receive better and freer medical attention than America’s heroes. It’s a lame stunt: Moore apparently cares about building on his own outlaw myth over the integrity of his film. Thereafter ensues a visit to Cuba proper where the socialized health care system provides the sympathetic and attentive care lacking in the US. In a move that would surely make Fox News proud, Moore films (manufactures?) a meeting between Cuban and American rescue workers and firefighters, in which the Cubans proudly salute and honor America’s bravest. Wasn’t this film supposed to be about American health care?
If I’ve emphasized the negatives of Moore’s aesthetic over the few good things he brings to a mainstream documentary that will probably be seen more than all other documentaries this year combined, it’s because I find it cynical to support a “Who else is doing what he’s doing in the limelight?” excusing of his inexcusable pomp and pandering. For seven years we’ve been told to lower our standards to adapt our thinking to a delusional president’s demented worldview, and while Moore’s sins aren’t nearly as terrible or significant as those of the political system to which he stands opposed, his unabashed tendency to talk down to his audience is symptomatic of our culture of mediocrity. Moore may very well open people’s eyes to the disaster that is American health care, but what will result from his legacy of allowing the political ends to justify the paltry cinematic means? National dialogue is vital to democracy. Nobody, I hope, wants that dialogue dragged down to the level of Fox News sound bites and Moorian quips. Norman Mailer once said, “Good writing is not an act to excite tolerance because it is good, but anguish because it is not better.” Moore doesn’t even make good films — his repeated inability to rise to the urgency of his subjects, to really enlighten the tremendously large audience he’s cultivated, therefore inspires all the more anguish.