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Cannes
gives Moore anti-Bush platform - 24th May 2004
(Credit:
The Sydney Morning Herald)
The Cannes film festival has given
Michael Moore the perfect platform to harangue
President George Bush after awarding the controversial
US filmmaker one of world cinema's top prizes.
Moore,
eager to stir the disenfranchised into voting
in November's presidential elections, landed the
best film award for Fahrenheit 9/11, a blistering
indictment of Bush's handling of Iraq and the
war on terror.
"Perhaps
this film will have a tremendous impact. I hope
it will," said Moore, who said he would be
shocked if the documentary did not find a US distributor
after being awarded the Palme d'Or.
The
Walt Disney company had ordered its Miramax unit
not to distribute the politically polarising documentary
in an election year.
Asked
how Bush would react to Moore winning such a prestigious
award, Moore said: "Would he even know what
this is?
"I
hope nobody tells him that I have won this award
while he is eating a pretzel," he said in
reference to the time Bush choked on a pretzel
and fainted while watching an American football
game on television.
Moore
won an Oscar two years ago for his anti-gun lobby
documentary Bowling for Columbine and electrified
the awards ceremony with an emotion-charged attack
on Bush.
Cannes
offered him another perfect propaganda opportunity
before the world's press when he said: "I
want to ensure that those who died in Iraq have
not died in vain."
Moore
also took the chance to apologise to France for
US jibes about re-naming French Fries "Freedom
Fries" and mockingly calling them "Cheese-eating
surrender monkeys" for resisting the war
in Iraq.
"The
French are our friends," Moore said. "Without
the French there might not have been a United
States of America. The French helped us in our
revolution.
"The
statue that graces our harbour in New York city
was a gift from the French people to celebrate
our liberty."
Moore
kept insisting that his prime aim had been to
make a movie that people would enjoy on a Saturday
night out. The jury president, cult film director
Quentin Tarantino, insisted the prize was not
political.
But
the critics disagreed, arguing this was a heartfelt
attack on the Bush administration that was designed
to stir disillusioned Americans into voting in
November.
The
film certainly packed an emotional punch, switching
from shots of American soldiers abusing Iraqi
prisoners to a grieving mother reading out the
last letter she ever received from her soldier
son in Iraq.
Moore's
loathing of Bush is palpable in every shot. The
President is painted as a politically incompetent
buffoon.
The
influential trade paper Variety called the deftly
edited movie "a blatant cinematic 2004 campaign
pamphlet" and the Hollywood Reporter agreed,
dubbing it "an election year device".
Cannes,
scorned by arthouse movie buffs as a crass marketplace
for cigar-chomping moguls to clinch deals on shiny
yachts, has turned political with a vengeance
this year and Moore hailed the way this mirrored
troubled times.
"Non-fiction
is taking itself out of its own ghetto,"
he said after his documentary landed the prize
which has in the past been awarded to some of
the world's greatest filmmakers.
Reuters
Links:
Media
websites
The
Sydney Morning Herald
Reuters
Websites
Cannes
Film Festival
Michael
Moore official website
Articles
Disney
blocks 9/11 doco - 6th May 2004
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