SICKO

Written and Directed by Michael Moore


Tony Benn: If you can find money to kill people, you can find money to help people.


Years ago, Michael Moore set out to produce a documentary about the American health care system and how that affects both those with and without insurance. In 1999 though, the Columbine shootings redirected his focus towards gun control and teenage violence. The health care project was put on hold and BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE was made and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary. Hollywood had found a new spokesman and Moore rode that wave for as long as he could. He was about to return to the health care project when the war in Iraq began. Again, Moore felt his efforts would be better put to use elsewhere. FARENHEIT 9/11, part expository documentary, part slander campaign to ensure George W. Bush would not be re-elected, became the highest grossing documentary of all time. He may have had notoriety like he had never known but he also had an increasing number of angry detractors. Moore’s success was inflating his ego and that ego was taking up more screen time than the subject matter itself in his films. Well, Mr. Moore has heard your complaints and has redirected his focus once again by removing it from himself and placing it back on the subject. Eight years after its original conception, Moore is finally ready to give us SICKO.


While Moore’s mug does still find its way into the action and his voice guides us along our tour of the world’s hospital waiting rooms, he is less invasive and more sympathetic in SICKO. In fact, we don’t even see him for the first third of the piece. Instead, real people with real horror stories of disappointment and struggle put a face to the bureaucracy. Having no insurance, Rick must make a decision between reattaching his middle finger ($60,000) or his ring finger ($12,000) after the tips are sliced off in a buzz saw accident as he cannot afford both. In her 50’s, Donna is forced to move in to her daughter’s storage room with her husband because their medical bills have far exceeded what their insurance will cover. The American people already know that their health care system does not work for everyone so SICKO ensures that people know the desperate realities of those that are left behind. Moore makes sure to get all his pills in a line by giving historical context to the deterioration of provided health care and establishes profit as the unsurprising devil. There have been so many stories of death and unnecessary suffering by this point in the film that the tears come naturally when you see the livelihood of real people being cast aside for profit expansion.


Yet through the tears, there is laughter to be had in SICKO and most of it is directed at Moore himself, as an American representative. Moore leaves the USA to explore whether socialized health care is as poor and pathetic as the American media and American Medical Association would have you believe. In Canada, he meets a hockey player who sliced several fingers off while playing and didn’t have to choose between having any one in particular reattached nor did he have to pay a cent for the operation. In England, he meets with a doctor who still earns a strong six-figure salary that affords him an Audi and a million-dollar home despite the government signing his checks. In France, he meets with a group of Americans who have relocated to France and are now enjoying social health benefits like 24-hour medical service that comes to your door. Moore seems as if in a constant state of shock and awe as he asks patients leaving hospitals what their bills cost. The response is always nothing but not before they have a good laugh at how ridiculous his question is.


When the initial urge to laugh has run its route, SICKO reminds us that we are laughing at how dire this situation has become. How else can one describe it when homeless patients, clearly without insurance, are dumped in front of shelters after being forced out of a hospital and forced into a cab? Moore still can’t resist a cheeky, sarcastic turn but his filmmaking is maturing. While past efforts struggled to maintain their objectivity, feeling at times like one man’s personal vendetta against the powers that be, SICKO is more like a rallying of the people, exposing many Americans’ selfish motivations to look out for themselves above all else as their ugliest problem. Instead of yelling incessantly at the Bush administration and the corporations that pull the strings, all Moore seems to be concerned with is how the American population is still allowing for a world where the weakest among them is left to die in the streets.

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

Directed by Davis Guggenheim

The crowd is hushed in anxious anticipation as the man they wait for makes his way through the maze of the backstage corridors. The fervor builds as the man stops to shake another’s hand, pose for a photograph. We can only see him from behind. We can barely make out who it is. Until, the wait comes to its end. Ladies and gentlemen, the man you’ve all been waiting for, the self-described man who used to be the next president of the United States, Al Gore! And, the crowd explodes in a respectfully enthusiastic show of admiration and reasonable applause.

In AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, former Vice-President of the United States, Al Gore, plays host to a lecture series audience on the impending impact global warming will have on our planet in his and your potential life time. Although it may sound odd in passing, Gore’s lecture series has been given around the globe, hundreds of times. In the time since he lost the bid for presidency, he has rededicated his life and passion to the subject of global warming and made it his priority to increase the awareness of its importance to people everywhere. Contrary to what one might expect from a lecture given by Gore, for example a long snooze, this particular series is actually thoroughly engaging. Of course, the subject matter itself is compelling enough as Gore walks us through image after time-lapsed image demonstrating a shockingly sparse amount of ice where once there was plenty and numerous graphs, be them bar or line, showing significant hikes in temperature and carbon dioxide emissions in the earth’s atmosphere from recent years. No matter the topic, one needs a compelling host to make sure the message hits where it should. The shock of the advanced progression of global warming may end up taking a back seat to the complete personality readjustment of Al Gore as he is charming, witty, sarcastic without being obnoxious and ultimately very comfortable, both with the material and himself. One can’t help but wonder why he didn’t demonstrate this side of himself when running for the presidency in the first place.


One also can’t help but wonder that because filmmaker Davis Guggenheim breaks up Gore’s seminar with allusion to Gore’s past from his upbringing to the election debacle in the state of Florida in 2000. The goal is to demonstrate how Gore came to be crusading for global warming awareness. Drawing a link between the death of his sister from lung cancer due to years and years of excessive cigarette smoking despite the knowledge of its likely tragic outcome and the general population’s ignorance towards the effects of global warming and our need for tragedy to inspire action is one thing. Drawing a link between a near-fatal car accident his son had when he was very young and Gore’s conviction towards the importance of human life makes sense but detracts from the focus of the film. Gore’s motivation or interest in the subject seems almost entirely irrelevant as the film is about the presentation, not the guy giving it. Not only does this filler detract but it also taints. Bringing up America’s decision to ultimately vote George W. Bush into office seems somewhat damning, as if to suggest that global warming is not getting any better because of you America. You voted for someone who doesn’t care about the environment and therefore disasters like Hurricane Katrina, which the film says was much worse due to the warming of the ocean water it traveled over between Florida and New Orleans, might not have been as bad had you voted in a president that cared about the planet. I’m sure Guggenheim isn’t trying to make such strong accusations but the implication is still made through his editing and the film falls off track occasionally as a result.

AN INCONVENEINT TRUTH is being dubbed the “Must-See” documentary of the summer, picking up where past hits THE MARCH OF THE PENGUINS and FARENHEIT 9/11 have left off. I have a difficult time agreeing with this praise. I do believe it to be must-see but this is because the content is important and the facts need to heard. And albeit an enjoyable experience, the content cannot be all that is judged as it is still a film and it is one that is flawed.