I don't know why filmmaker Michael Moore generates such a surprising level of antipathy among his critics, or why it gets personal so quickly. Even the New Yorker, in a recent review of Moore's new documentary, "Sicko," refers to "his bulk," and other reviewers manage, for no real reason, to include the word "rotund."
True, Moore is outspoken and occasionally abrasive, acerbic or surly. But good criticism separates these characteristics, as well as his weight, from his art, and even the most begrudging critics have to concede that Moore is one of our most talented filmmakers, whatever they think of his politics.
Moore has been dinged from time to time for getting his facts wrong, and I'm not prepared to vouch for everything he says in his movies. Of course, a filmmaker has an obligation to get the facts right, but he also has a legitimate right to shape his material to serve a goal. Moore has never made a secret of the fact that his films are meant to convey his point of view.
Besides, there are facts, and then there is the truth. If there are a few mistaken facts in a movie like Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," for example, they pale in comparison with the accuracy of its portrayal of our misguided presence in Iraq. Too bad we didn't listen to him more closely in 2004.
And Moore gets it mostly right in "Sicko," as well. I saw the film recently, and then watched Moore and CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta lock horns on "Larry King Live." Gupta had "fact checked" "Sicko" and used several minor discrepancies to assert that Moore had "fudged" his facts. The tone of his report was dismissive and a bit smug: after all, it implied, no health-care system is going to be perfect, so maybe ours isn't so bad.
But here's an important fact that didn't come up in this exchange: While I have no reason to doubt his objectivity, Gupta is a doctor. And since doctors will lose money from the implementation of the national health reform that Moore champions, Gupta's report should be evaluated against the backdrop of his conflict of interest.
And "Sicko" shouldn't be dismissed as easily as Gupta would like. If Moore's portrayal of health care in England and France looks too good to be true, there are some facts that no one is denying, like the 50 million or so Americans who have no health coverage whatsoever. "Sicko" isn't about them, though. It's about the rest of us, who have coverage that turns out to be inadequate when we really need it.
These are the stories that Moore tells. People suffer, and sometimes even die, because HMOs profit from the creative denial of benefits. The victims' stories are dramatic and heartbreaking, and on the day I saw "Sicko" some in the audience wept.
In fact, it's rare to see a modern audience react as vigorously as this one did to "Sicko." At the end, audience members applauded and cheered. Several women distributed a form letter in support of HR 676, the National Health Insurance Act, and encouraged the moviegoers to write to our representative. Many in the audience took a copy. The fact is, polls indicate that a significant majority of our citizens want health-care reform that includes universal coverage for all citizens. They recognize that without health our rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" are meaningless.
Unfortunately, proponents of the status quo continue to argue that the marketplace generates the best health care at the most competitive prices, even though that position is hard to square with reality. They've been saying for years that the health-care systems in all of our Western allies are plagued with long waits, forfeiture of physician choice and substandard medicine. Unless Moore is just making things up - and if he is, someone will let us know - "Sicko" does a good job of calling this self-serving portrait into question.
Maybe that's why, after attacking the few things that he may get wrong, they go after Moore's disheveled corpulence - because the real power and money in this country doesn't want us to see how much he's got right.
John M. Crisp teaches in the English Department at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas. E-mail jcrisp@delmar.edu.
