Movie Review
Sicko
Michael Moore has created something of a huge following and great expectations for his work, ever since his Cannes Film Festival Award Winning Farenheit 9/11 and the assault he laid against the Bush Administration. Returning to Cannes once more with yet another politically minded bent, Moore brings Sicko to theaters this summer, an assault on the American Health System and how it compares to other major world nations such as Cuba and France.
Michael Moore is known for his deconstruction method, taking apart interviews and using them to distort the truth for use as propaganda. In a particular scene in the film, Moore makes use of the Parisian landscape to raise his own brazen agenda rather than presenting a documentary. He does not lie ever, but leaves out the truth of things, cutting total information, and carefully cutting interviews to display the perspective he’s trying to create.
Despite so many shots of a happy couple in the streets of Paris who lives off of 8,000 Euros, there remains the fact that France is not a socialist nation. For Parisian youth, education must still be paid for, and that striking is necessary and expected but not a world movement as in America. Doctors are capable of arriving and helping you in the middle of the night, but it is not free. Carefully crafted stories or no, Michael Moore shows a world that is not fully realistic.
The most important part of the Moore film formula is that the audience doesn’t know any better. He counts on his audience being ignorant of the topics on which he speaks and reasons through absurd methods. He shows ridiculous situations in which the only high tech medical care offered in the US is in Guantanamo.
He is a master of manipulation and manages to turn his acquaintances to his own purposes. He is able to gather three boats and take with him men and women who were thrown to the wolves by the insurance conglomerates and take them to the Military base in Cuba where they will not be able to go. He utilizes these ridiculous situations to gather the kinds of heart rending stories and reactions that resonate with his audiences.
Moland Fengkov is a Paris-based contributing writer and Cannes film festival correspondent for Plume Noire, an L.A. based international magazine specialized in Foreign films and film festivals. Visit Plume-Noire.com for more foreign film reviews and film festival coverages.
Article Source: Moland Fengkov
Sicko: Movie Review