Went tonight to the New York premiere of the new Michael Moore film "Sicko" at the Ziegfeld. Never having been a huge fan of Michael Moore, I went mostly for the sake of catching up with a friend of mine. Okay, and the oddly pleasurable rush I get from anonymously drinking diet soda garnished with a wedge of complete obscurity next to really wealthy, powerful, famous Hollywood people who are drinking complimentary champagne chilled by diamonds and eating money-stuffed mushrooms warmed by flashbulbs.
While I'm not a huge fan, I've always thought that, almost certainly, Michael Moore is a good guy with his heart in the right place, but the couple of movies of his I've seen left me feeling like the creative license he takes undermines what could have been larger points to his work -- like there was almost a journalistic irresponsibility (albeit in the name of good intentions) that left me with a feeling of, like, "Damn, that's why the conservatives dismiss the left so easily." Although, in fairness, I'd have to say that's a handy/lazy point of view for me to come up with so conveniently, since I think the fundamentalist right and altruistic left piss me off about equally on any given day. Anyway, my point -- and I won't indulge myself any further in making it, I promise -- is this: see this film!
Right, but here I go breaking that promise I just made:
Equal parts absolutely chilling, sobering, heartbreaking, even oddly entertaining at turns without veering into journo-101 stunts. Simple in its power, intelligent, moral, honest and nuanced -- it's work that is bigger than Michael Moore and it is unbelievably stirring and moving to see him in the frame of it, seeming to slowly realize that.
You can honestly count on me to be a pretty sturdy cynic in the most so-called moving moments; a very sober accounting is always running through my head at every turn of anything "designed" to move me -- and I came to this movie ready to find exactly how it was trying to work on me. But, Jesus, the evidence of everyday people just trying to take care of themselves and their loved ones in the bind of what has become the American middle class, so plainly presented -- it put a lump in my throat and an apology in my heart for everything our Grandfathers fought for and what we've somehow let it become.
The message in "Sicko" is even bigger than the subject matter of a failing so-called health care system; I was sitting there struck with this really simple and dumbfounded realization that we've learned to become the kind of people who, for a price (and there is a price -- have you ever received a $50,000 bonus at work? Have you ever received a $100,000 bonus at work? Plus a raise?) will look each other in the eye and deny a policy payment for the ambulance ride from one's head-on automobile collision on the highway on the grounds that one didn't call ahead to the 800 number for pre-approval for an ambulance ride. Or scour your policy looking for a way to deny paying for your chemotherapy even though you were insured and your cancer was not a pre-existing condition.
The compassion and humble decency Michael Moore showed in making this movie is amazing -- especially in a time when the country is filled with powerful wealthy men giving an obscene amount of self-aggrandizing lip service to God and Family Values, while somehow never getting around to doing the kind of work that resembles the influence of either.
And you know, I feel I did my part tonight by not handing Harvey Weinstein a galley of my next book at the after-party then hugging him, weeping, and refusing to let go unless he agreed to make it into a movie.
So, yeah...we all do what we can.
That's my point, really.
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