Great Salon review of right-wing docu "Celsius 41.11": "SURREALLY BAD"

[NYCGirl]

Stephanie Zacharek sees the film, so no one else has to:

http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2004/10/27/celsius_41_11/index.html


"Celsius 41.11" tells us in no uncertain terms that Bush won the election fair and square, that weapons of mass destruction kind of existed in Iraq, that John Kerry may mean well but is unfit to lead our country, and that the PATRIOT Act is designed to protect Americans, not hinder their civil liberties. In support of these incontrovertible truths, we hear from people like Bill Sammon of the Washington Times (or, as I like to call it, "Moonie River"), think tanker Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Swift Boat Veteran for Truth (stop it -- you're killin' me!) and Nixon White House-approved vets' spokesperson John O'Neill, and "terrorism expert" Monsoor Ijaz, as well as the aforementioned Medved. When the writers (Lionel Chetwynd, who directed right-wing fave "The Hanoi Hilton," and Ted Steinberg) need to fill in the gaps between these noted authorities, they put words into the mouth of an anonymous but authoritative narrator (could it be God himself?) who imparts assorted essential facts, explaining, for example, that after the 2000 election, there were "claims of black voter disenfranchisement," but those claims were "never substantiated." And believe me, they tried to find some people of color to talk to, but that would have meant leaving the neighborhood.

All documentaries are made by human beings with a point of view, if not an agenda, so there's no sense getting worked up over a picture that's an unapologetically unadorned Bush campaign ad (provided that's where you choose to put nine or ten bucks' worth of your moviegoing dollars). But "Celsius 41.11" is so bad it's almost like performance art, or those cheap records from the '60s, where the Chipmunks sing the Beatles' greatest hits. The movie's assorted facts are supported with footage of dead children lying in the streets (who are these children? where are these streets?), footage that the director, Kevin Knoblock (whom you may remember as the director of -- well, just give me a minute and and I'll think of it), evidently liked so much he decided to use it no fewer than three times. Footage from Sept. 11, including some of those nice wham-o shots of the planes hitting the towers, is used to show us how our world has been irrevocably changed, just in case we'd forgotten. While Michael Moore is hardly a master of subtlety himself, "Celsius 41.11" makes him look like Jean Renoir.