Fahrenheit 11/9

Front Row at the Movies by Shirrel Rhoades

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Don’t get confused by the title. It sounds an awful lot like a previous film by Michael Moore.

The first one was “Fahrenheit 9/11,” a critical look at the presidency of George W. Bush. The title referred to the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Moore’s latest film is titled “Fahrenheit 11/9,” a dyslectic transposition of the numbers. But that was intentional, for it happens to be the date that Donald Trump’s win in the 2016 United States presidential election was announced (the election took place the day before).

That tells you this new documentary takes a sharp-eyed look at the reign of Trump.

“Fahrenheit 11/9” is currently politicizing audiences at Tropic Cinema.

Michael Moore’s politics are no secret. He has criticized globalization, large corporations, the healthcare system, assault weapons, the Iraq War, and three U.S. presidents.

“I and you and everyone else has to be a political activist,” he maintains. “If we’re not politically active, it ceases to be a democracy.”

Moore’s film “Bowling for Columbine” used the Columbine High School Massacre to examine the gun culture in the United States. It won an Academy Award as Best Documentary.

The aforementioned “Fahrenheit 9/11” became the highest-grossing documentary of all time.

And “Sicko,” which looked into US healthcare, became one of the top ten highest-grossing documentaries ever.

He’s found an audience.

You know whether you’re among the throng or not.

These recent film titles are a play on Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel “Fahrenheit 451,” a reference to the temperature at which paper burns.

As for “Fahrenheit 11/9,” one of the film’s taglines is “The Temperature at Which Freedom Burns.”

Email Shirrel: srhoades@aol.com