16 June 2016
Where to Invade Next
A film by Michael Moore
Reviewed by Don Urquhart
Last night I attended the UK premiere of Where to Invade Next. This puts me among a select group of people in 125 cinemas around the country. The film’s more traditional premiere was a star attraction at the Sheffield Film Festival, whence an interview with the film’s director was beamed following the showing. Michael Moore, for it was he, was interviewed by Owen Jones and the conversation drifted onto the imminent American election.
I was reminded of the last Michael Moore UK premiere I had attended. This was a more conventional affair in Leicester Square. The film on that occasion was Sicko and the director couldn’t join us. Instead the event was hosted by the late Tony Benn standing in at the last minute for his friend. The movie was an indictment of American healthcare, and, in particular, its despoliation by predatory insurance companies. It was 2008 with Obama up against Hillary for the Democratic nomination. Sicko pointed out and listed on screen the many healthcare companies funding the Clinton campaign. Outside the premiere I had been handed a leaflet describing the Obamacare manifesto. I remember thinking that no UK political party would have the effrontery to implement such policies which would have amounted to the demolition of the NHS. The name Lansley was yet to register on my consciousness.
For his latest movie Michael Moore has ventured abroad to find things he would like to take back to the USA. True to form there is considerable cherry-picking, but, in fairness, he concedes up front that he has come to find the flowers, not the weeds.
His theme is the charm of aspects of social policy in other countries. I won’t go into them in any detail as this would dilute the impact for anyone who goes to see the film. But his choice of a country which offers free university education will surprise, as will the interviews with British and American students taking advantage of it – many of the courses are in English. You find yourself trying to square the received wisdom that Italy is near bankruptcy with the fabulous staff benefits offered by the magnanimous business owners. Are they just too wonderful and is it a put up job? The Finnish success with education is an open secret. Watch this and weep for our own children and those who teach under our own target driven regimen. In our party was someone who had taught at a primary school in the 1980’s and who, with a lot of headshaking pronounced that it was how our schools were back in her day. We also had someone teaching currently who said that she was actively discouraged from teaching anything beyond what was needed to pass the tests.
The examples he chooses to demonstrate female empowerment are both from outside the EU. One certainly surprised me. I shall say no more. Wherever he went and whatever flowers he put on display, of course he does not present an objective view – he is genetically incapable of this – but for me he is the Attenborough of social anthropology endlessly inquisitive and educational about why people and societies are as they are.
While I admit that Michael Moore is indeed the Marmite of moviemaking, for my money he is as potent a treasure as Judi and Stephen. Please see this film whatever your preconceptions about the man.
When Owen Jones asked why the filmmaker had not looked in Britain for flowers to pick, he replied with great sadness that there were none left. At the very least you will come away from Where to Invade Next with a lot more knowledge of other countries and, hopefully, a few questions about your own.
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