Box Office Shepherds

Mel Gibson and Michael Moore made very different movies with the same message: The truth shall make you free

By Richard Lacayo Sunday, Dec. 19, 2004

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    As for Fahrenheit 9/11, although red staters went to see the movie and bought the DVD when it came out, strategically, just before the November elections, it was in the blue zone that it became the cultural event of the year. For liberals weary of living in a country full of war whoops from the right, a place where Bill O'Reilly is always puffing out his chest and Ann Coulter snapping her jaws, Fahrenheit 9/11 became the emotional rallying point that the Democratic Party--its convention, its 2004 campaign, even its candidate--never entirely provided. Moore says his film helped bring out millions of Democratic voters. "Had there been no Fahrenheit 9/11," he says, "and no MoveOn.org no Bruce Springsteen or Jon Stewart--with a war going on, Bush would have won by a landslide."

    Speaking of Springsteen and Stewart, both filmsarrived in a year in which public discourse was, more than ever, conducted by cultural means. In a nation that looks to Stewart and Jay Leno for its news, and in which rap and rock stars worked alongside political operatives to turn out the vote, mere candidates sometimes seemed secondary to the more visible and closely followed celebrity wise guys. It's that world that Moore now stands astride like an unkempt colossus. There were times last summer and fall when he was a virtual one-man opposition party, the guy who went regularly and brazenly where the Democratic standard bearers feared to tread, the one unafraid to roughhouse with George W. Bush over his family's links to the Saudis or his slow-motion response on the morning the planes hit the towers.

    In fact, one key to the success of Fahrenheit 9/11 was its willingness to humiliate, belittle and demystify a President with a fierceness not seen since, well, Sean Hannity, the Fox News conservative fang barer, last glared in the direction of Bill Clinton. Ferocity, after all, is what incites the passion of the audience. It was one of the things that made The Passion of the Christ as powerful as it was. "I wanted it to be shocking," Gibson has said. "I wanted it to push the viewer over the edge." So he made a film distinguished by brutalities so continuous that they threatened to turn the episodes of Christ's agony into "action beats," the moments of onscreen adrenaline that screenwriters are taught to provide every few scenes to keep the audience satisfied. But the bloodshed has a point. By forcing the film's viewers to behold the excruciating particulars of Christ's suffering, Gibson obliges them to confront what he has called "the enormity of that sacrifice. To see that someone could endure that and still come back with love and forgiveness."

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