Michael Moore is a political activist, journalist, writer, satirist by vocation and seniority, an American documentary filmmaker who shot 11 films that differ in capacity in criticizing the American way of life and US foreign policy.
Facts from the biography
Michael Moore was born in a provincial American town in Michigan under the name Flint on April 23, 1954. He began his education at one of the local universities, while building a career as a journalist. After some time, he managed to organize the release of the independent local weekly Voice of Flint, where he was listed as editor-in-chief from 1976 to 1986. But the movie was haunting the original, so in order to shoot his debut film, Michael Moore rebuilt his home as a bingo club.
Debut
The first documentary, Roger and Me (1989), covered the events of a local social disaster that occurred in Flint after the closure of local subsidiaries of General Motors Corporation. With his weapon of influence, director Michael Moore chose a sharp satire. And using the original editing, he achieved the desired comic effect. The whole originality of the editing was that the frames of the documentary chronicle alternated with inserts from fragments of television commercials and episodes of second-rate pictures. Significant box office revenues received after the release of the project, made the critics pay attention not only to the director-debutant, but also to the genre of highly social documentary films.
"Bowling for Columbina"
In further works, which also belonged to the genre of acute political and social satire, the director mercilessly criticizes American politicians and the capitalist system as a whole, the processes of globalization and corporations in particular, and neoliberalism. According to critics, the director’s most resonant project is considered to be the Bowling for Columbine film, which won the Academy Award in the category “Best Documentary”. The main issue that Michael Moore covers in the film is armed violence in the United States. Discussing the direct relationship between fear and violence, the author asks why there are much more deaths in America from direct use of firearms than in other states. The motivation for creating the tape was the terrible events that took place at Columbine School in Colorado on April 20, 1999. Then a pair of high school students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, armed, staged a massacre in the school, as a result of the exchange of fire they had suffered, students and teachers of the educational institution, a total of 37 people were injured, 13 of them died from their injuries. After the instigation, the children committed suicide and shot themselves. These tragic events were highlighted in his work by Michael Moore. The films “Health Protection” (2007), “The Revolt of Loafers” (2008), “Capitalism: A Love Story” (2009) only consolidated the glory of a scandalous documentary that touches on socio-economic topics and exciting issues.
Fahrenheit 9/11
But before these paintings, Michael Moore received the Golden Palm Branch at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004 for the Fahrenheit 9/11 project, and a little later, another 22 awards from famous film screenings. In this work, the director told the public about the events of September 11, 2001 and the origins of terrorism. This political pamphlet investigation was positioned to expose the policies of President George W. Bush. The narrative contained certain facts and assumptions about the dishonest way the former oil businessman from Texas managed to come to the highest authorities and how he used the power exclusively for his own selfish purposes. The film caused an unprecedented wave of genuine excitement at the box office in the United States and the world, only Michael Moore could remove such political pathos. Fahrenheit 9/11 is inferior to previous works from an artistic point of view, but is a model of inventive ingenuity and creative avant-garde.
Two prizes of the film festival for the "Love Story"
His last project, “Capitalism: A Love Story” (2009), Moore shot before a long creative break, which lasted six years. In it, the author took up the study and analysis of the root causes of the global financial crisis. The picture will tell about the manipulation of money by American taxpayers, facts will be presented that denounce a variety of banks, corporations, politicians and individual top managers who, according to Moore, committed the biggest robbery and went unpunished. For his brainchild, the director was awarded two prizes of the Venice Film Festival. Then Michael Moore, whose films regularly excited the public, took a timeout. Reminding me sometimes of an interview with the media, for example, in support of Quentin Tarantino, who managed to speak out about the extreme cruelty of the American police, which caused a wave of discontent among the ranks of law enforcement officers.
Return
The scandalous documentary in September 2015 at the Toronto Film Festival presented a new work, once again exposing the aggressive US foreign policy. The satirical tape “Where else to invade”, the work on which was kept in strict secrecy, promises to be the most provocative and fun trick that Michael Moore is capable of. “Where else to invade” also assures that the invasion will take place “without stressful post-traumatic disorders”, “without prisoners” and “without victims”. Moore in this project acted as a director and screenwriter. The producers of the picture were Karl Dil and Tia Lessin. Jamie Roy, editors Woody Richman and Pablo Pronza, who have already worked with the author on Love Story, took an active part in making the film. According to Moore, there is no separate American military adventure that inspired him to shoot the picture, but since this topic worried him for a long time, this allowed saturating the work with the necessary share of satire. This is the whole of Michael Moore. “Where else to invade” should be strongly recommended for viewing the entire thinking audience.