‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ at 20: Revisiting the Fear and Anger

Michael Moore’s 2004 documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11” opens with a dazed look at the 2000 presidential election, when it seemed that Vice President Al Gore might defeat George W. Bush, then the governor of Texas. “Was it all just a dream?” Moore’s voice-over intones, before going on to chronicle Bush’s first year in office, the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The opening might remind some viewers of witnessing election night 2016 and Donald Trump’s surprise victory, but that’s only one echo of several in Moore’s blockbuster documentary. Twenty years ago, “Fahrenheit 9/11” landed in an era facing similar challenges to today: wars abroad that divide people at home, worries that the country was losing sight of long-cherished principles, fears about presidential abuses of power. It felt like a do-or-die moment, much as 2024 does, and Moore embraced the roles of truth-teller, fire-starter, satirist, confidant, and man-of-the-people bullhorn.

The movie was a popular phenomenon: It became the top-grossing documentary domestically, according to Box Office Mojo, making $119 million. This was years before streamers pumped out hours and hours of nonfiction features and series. Controversy erupted even before it was released, when Disney tried to block its distribution out of political concerns. After a Palme d’Or win in Cannes, a June release followed.

The groundswell showed that Moore was tuning into a national mood. As Bush sought re-election in the thick of the Iraq occupation and terrorism alerts, Moore’s film vented about the toll of the Iraq War and the administration’s overall response to the 9/11 attacks. (Cue the infamous Aug. 6, 2001, C.I.A. warning to Bush: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”) Whipping up sympathy and outrage over the deaths of young U.S. soldiers and Iraqis, and the perceptions of Bush as out of touch, Moore stirs up a potent cocktail of damning news clips, filmed confrontations and tag-alongs, and plain old ridicule (for instance, Attorney General John Ashcroft bellowing a patriotic song of his own composition).

It’s all less preachy than polemical, with doses of Mark Twain showmanship and heartstring-pulling. Moore’s feature managed to capture a popular political narrative about recent U.S. history without feeling out of date as soon as it was released. It’s a feat that today’s constant EKG of social media response has made more difficult (along with evolving trends in how movies are made and released). In a time before YouTube, Moore’s documentary performed a service in surfacing footage of casualties or abuses in Iraq, or insensitive presidential gaffes, that was not always available to see.

One of Moore’s talents was to make a scene, in every sense — dramatic moments that might later be called “viral.” This dates back to his confronting the chief executive of General Motors in his Oscar-winning 1989 film “Roger & Me,” and although Moore minimizes his own screen time here, he and his team turn Bush into a kind of mockery meme. A centerpiece is Bush’s minutes-long pause after learning of the second plane striking the World Trade Center, during a reading of “The Pet Goat” in a Florida classroom (an image that has indeed become commonly used online). Moore is ruthless with emotional pivot points of all kinds: Early on, just after showing Bush smirking before announcing the Iraq War, he cuts to a black screen with audio-only accounts of 9/11, effectively leaving any theatrical audience to sit in the dark together and seethe.

Moore’s fast-and-loose style of argument came in for significant criticism. There can be a conspiratorial air to the web of financial and otherwise chummy connections he draws between the Bush family, the bin Laden extended family and other Saudi Arabian entities. But “Fahrenheit 9/11” also includes a frightening moment that presages the reflexive denialism that’s only grown more rampant. Moore joins a mother of a slain U.S. soldier as she visits Washington, D.C., and talks to an antiwar protester, only to encounter a woman saying, “This is all staged.”

The soldier’s mother was named Lila Lipscomb, and as the documentary winds down, she becomes the movie’s respectable center, and a kind of proxy as an American conflicted about her country. Moore gives full vent to Lipscomb’s grief and frustration, especially in a scene with her family arrayed around her, part of Moore’s moving sequences in Flint, Mich. Her moments remind us that “Fahrenheit 9/11” isn’t a prosecutor’s brief, despite some compelling evidence, but a political and emotional appeal, rooted in the ways in which the country’s burdens are unequally borne.

Subtle is beside the point here, which is always a good reminder in any election year. Moore openly envisioned “Fahrenheit 9/11” as an intervention, saying in a 2004 Film Comment interview that “the ending of this movie takes place on Nov. 2” — that is, Election Day 2004. Watching the movie now, it’s hard not to marvel at the audacity of his attempt, even if Moore’s statement still holds: The story’s ending depends on what people do when they leave the theater.

“Fahrenheit 9/11” is streaming on Peacock and Tubi.