Sicko
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 1 hour, 53 minutes
Directed by: Michael Moore
Three years ago, Michael Moore slammed into America at its most divisive and angry as the summer of 2004 saw the War in Iraq, a war he was against from the beginning, and the battle between John Kerry and George W. Bush for control of the White House. Moore made his statement(s) in Fahrenheit 9/11, a film that’s as confused as it is angry. It tries to examine and understand how we got from 9/11 to Iraq but America wasn’t ready to hear it and even if they were, it would have been muddled by Moore’s bizarre linking of Saudi Arabia to the Bush Administration. While these links were probably true to some extent, they smacked of a Loose Change-conspiracy that misses the point, looks for solace in the intelligence of a conspiracy (because at least if they’re out to get you, they’re not incompetent), and doesn’t understand that the more important question is the future.
Sicko picks up where Fahrenheit 9/11 left off: our President is a moron who doesn’t know how to talk but just because he’s ignorant, doesn’t mean you have to be. Moore’s focus is restored and most of Sicko focuses on the shortcomings of our healthcare system while singing the praises of the healthcare systems of Great Britain, Canada, and France. Up until the last thirty minutes, when Moore’s grandstanding obfuscates his better point about repairing the healthcare system, Sicko is a riviting, thought-provoking film that doesn’t necessarily wins you to Moore’s cause but certainly convinces that something must be done.
There’s surprisingly little of Moore’s famous guerilla-style tactics of charging into a company and demanding answers. Instead, he simply lets the victims and repentant perpatrators speak for themselves and lets their words (with a little help from his narration) carry the day. Moore barely steps in front of the camera until his trip to Cuba (more on that problematic venture in a bit) although his familiar soft, nasally voice remains present throughout.
In some ways, Sicko represents Moore’s most mature film to date. He continues to demonstrate that his greatest asset is as an editor, stringing together arguments and expertly splicing in stock footage or music cues to great effect. Of course, sometimes he’s a little too good as one can’t help but see the irony of Moore using the same black/white color palette as those in the Bush Administration except he’s just flipped it around. More than Moore’s grandstanding, the film’s failure to paint the countries of Canada, England, and France in a realistic light makes his argument less convincing. Sure, the French governement will give you a nanny when you have a newborn and will even do your laundry, but wasn’t it a couple summers ago when France was also having mass riots? Yeah, you don’t have to pay for your healthcare in Canada, but don’t they also have a huge unemployment rate? I understand that Moore is making an argument and doesn’t want to undercut himself, but by overreaching on the positive, he ends up undercutting the vital complexity and complicated reality of these other systems.
The truest aim in Sicko comes from the stories of those that the American healthcare system has failed. Once Moore establishes the pacing of talking about America before talking about one of the three other western industrialized nations, there’s a dread everytime he returns to our shores because we know we’re about to be treated to a personal tragedy that will both depress and infuriate. For example, after the less-than-subtle contrast of England paying doctors to save more lives while the HMOs pay for more claim denials, we hear the story of Mychelle. Mychelle was an 18-month year old girl who developed a fever of 104 and even though she went to the hospital, Kaiser refused care because it wasn't their hospital. She got to a Kaiser hospital just in time to die. Moore makes it clear that this is negligent homicide at best, and cold-blooded murder at worst.
But as the film nears its conclusion, and Moore extols the virtues of other countries, you can already hear the cries of the conservative commentators and the right-wing blogosphere (assuming they even bother to see the film and don't despise it based purely on Moore's involvement): "Love it or leave it." They'll tell him to get out if he doesn't love America. That to find fault with America is to not love America and we have no time or patience for those that don't love their country (insofar as just orating the words “I love my country”; wanting to make it better means you must...hate America?).
The grand irony is that the film will and should engender outrage which is the specialty of talking heads. Outrage at ourselves and outrage that we've let each other be treated like this. But the outrage will be directed at Moore rather than those that have allowed the system to get so out of hand that we'll dump old women on sidewalk corners rather than give them the care they need. How is it that we can band together when things are at their worst, at times like September 11th, but have allowed ourselves to become so divided that we've become locked in a battle for survival? There's enough blame to go around, but there's not enough justice. It's time to look forward. It's time not to ask, not to wonder, but to demand universal healthcare from the field of candidates running in 2008. Not just for President, but for the House of Representative and in the Senate. It shouldn't have gone like this but it did. The question is how much longer are we going to quit saying that America's the best country in the world and actually start being it?
Asking questions like these and raising larger ideas is Sicko’s greatest contribution because it goes beyond Moore and any debate about his slight of hand. You’ll leave the theatre wondering why are we so afraid and angry to help others? When talking about the fund to help 9/11 volunteers, Gov. George Pataki makes constant note of all the ways people won’t be able to use it; to make sure that no one gets a free ride. Are we that bitter? Are we that insanely protective or jealous or envious that we'd rather err on the side of with-holding rather than the side of generosity? When did it become a sin to help people? And if you think that this may be one of Moore's attempts to twist the truth and smear the government and that these are just a few people who fell through the cracks of an otherwise glorious system, then I'll ask you: why is it that over five years since 9/11, the site of the World Trade Center is still a crater? America was wounded and we were so busy being mad and upset and eager to return the cut upon us ten-fold, that we forgot to heal. We're still bleeding, and only the greedy; only the amoral; only the hateful; only the selfish; only the vampires are drinking deep.
Unfortunately, Moore can’t resist a good gimmick. He almost made it through this time, but he's a showman and like holding up a picture of a dead girl to Charleton Heston or asking representatives and senators to sign their children up to go to Iraq, he just has to take it one step too far. He has to inject himself into the proceedings rather than letting the facts speak for themselves. Guantanamo Bay and it’s “free, universal health care” is this film’s gimmick and it’s a shame. I mean, let’s just be clear, there’s nothing free or universal about the health care in Gitmo. You don’t pay in money but you pay in stress positions for hours on end or other forms of torture. It would only be universal if Gitmo was filled with people of all ages, races, creeds, and whathaveyou rather than all getting the same ticket in: “You Might Be a Terrorist”. I was surprised that when Moore finds that he doesn't have enough room on the ship out of Miami to take all the people who want “free” healthcare at Gitmo, he doesn't say, “We're gonna need a bigger boat." I mean, how many times do you get to say that and actually require a larger vessel? Of course, they don’t even get near Gitmo and I doubt anyone expected to. So instead they go to Havana, Cuba.
I can't help but wonder if Moore hopes that you don't notice that while we're ranked just ahead of Slovenia in health care, Slovenia is ranked just ahead of Cuba (this information is in the film; look for it when he runs the list). And Cuba isn't perfect and Castro ain't great and I'm not just saying that because, as Moore argues, it's from dreaded propaganda. According to the World Health Organization, Cuba is ranked 39th in healthcare but then suddenly “has become known around the world as having not only one of the best health care systems but as being one of the most generous countries in providing doctors and medical equipment to third-world countries.”
So does the big lie at the end negate the power of the rest of the film? I don’t think so. I think the message remains the same and it’s one that's not hard to understand but very hard to argue against: our healthcare system is broken and it doesn’t have to be. We should demand better for ourselves and we can get it. We can get it in our lifetime but we have to demand it. Not ask, not plead, not compromise, but demand it. Michael Moore will always be Michael Moore and whether you love him or hate him is unimportant because he’s not the issue. Our country, our friends, our family, and our health is the issue. Even with Moore getting in the way of his own message, the issue is too powerful and too important to be ignored any longer.
Sicko is a film that will exist publically and to judge it without the social reaction it will create feels like only half a review. But just as a film, it’s too important to miss. We can only hope that unlike the government and the HMOs, people will care.
Words by
Matt Goldberg
6.25.07