Well, it took a while, but I finally saw it.

It probably goes without saying that I came away with mixed feelings; I don’t know how you can be a thinking human being and not come away from this film with mixed feelings, whether you think Michael Moore is a prophet of Truth or rabidly anti-American. For about the first third of the production, I was mostly just annoyed by Moore’s fondness for juxtaposing random images with random songs and almost random phrases, as if that kind of thing is equal to making an argument:

A guitar strums. Here is George W. Bush getting his hair combed. Someone sponging makeup onto Dick Cheney. Paul Wolfowitz sucking on a comb and running it through his hair. John Ashcroft asking the camera to make him look young. Bush smirking. Suddenly, the guitar music dies and we cut to a black screen with audio of the September 11th plane crashes…..

You tell me what that is supposed to mean.

For sinister connections between the Bush family and the Saudis (or as he calls them, the “Saw-dees”), simply add shots of one of the Georges shaking hands with people in red checkered headdresses and white robes. Make sure everyone is smiling, because conspirators always smile with glee over their evil plans. Play the tinkly-music-of-oil-tycoons in the background.

And what on earth is with the implication that Bush became President just because the Fox network announced that he had won Florida?

Other dirty tricks: Shorthand, like showing three seconds of a jerky black and white video of a public beheading in Saudi Arabia to indicate that no connection with a country that would do something like that could ever possibly be legitimate. Making fun of, not the concept of the “Coalition of the Willing,” but the countries of the “Coalition of the Willing,” by showing video of people pounding rocks and monkeys sitting at a conference table.

Gah.

When the film starts to get into the war in Iraq, though, and lets real people talk about real experiences and real emotions, it gets a lot more powerful. Here’s some soldiers talking about how they can get their CD players to pipe into their helmets while they drive tanks through the streets of Baghdad bombing and shooting. The song they listen to the most is Fire Water Burn by the Bloodhound Gang. A soldier chants the lyrics with a weird smile on his face, and it is one of the creepiest things I have ever seen. I had never imagined that there would be a soundtrack to the war. Another soldier — blond, handsome, frowning — tells you that when you kill someone, you destroy some part of your own soul. A mother who has lost her son weeps in front of the White House. An Iraqi woman cries out to God after her house and the houses of her family have been razed and her relatives killed. We are all civilians, she wails. There is no militia here.

I don’t really know how to end this post. I guess I want to hear what other people think. Have you seen this movie? What do you think, especially now that the 9/11 Commission has released its report? Hit the comment button or send me an email.