Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 11/9

Duration: 2 hr. 07 min.

"Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 11/9" is a provocative and comedic look at the times in which we live. It will explore the two most important questions of the Trump Era: How the fuck did we get here, and how the fuck do we get out? It's the film to see before it's too late." {Rotten Tomatoes}

Fahrenheit 11/9 is a 2018 American political documentary by filmmaker Michael Moore about the 2016 United States presidential election and the subsequent presidency of Donald Trump. The film had its world premiere on September 6, 2018 at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival, and was released in the United States on September 21, 2018, by Briarcliff Entertainment.

It grossed $6.7 million worldwide, one of the lowest totals of Moore's career. It received mostly positive reviews, with review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes saying it "[preaches] to a specific choir, but for anyone who's enjoyed Moore's filmography [it is] another worthy chapter".

Synopsis:

The distributor describes the documentary as "a provocative and comedic look at the times in which we live", referring to the 2016 United States presidential election and the subsequent presidency of Donald Trump. The documentary also explores two questions: How the US progressed to the Trump presidency and how to "get out" of the era of the Trump administration.

Title:

The film's title relies on U.S. date notation to refer to November 9, when Trump's 2016 presidential win was announced (the election took place the day prior). The title simultaneously serves as a callback to Moore's 2004 political documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, which refers to the date of the September 11 attacks in the United States. Both of Moore's documentary titles are an allusion to the 1953 dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

Production:

Director Michael Moore partnered with producers Harvey Weinstein and Bob Weinstein in May 2017 to produce and distribute Fahrenheit 11/9. The Weinsteins planned to fund $2 million out of $6 million in a documentary deal. The Weinsteins did not provide the funding, and the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations emerged in the following October. As a result, Moore laid off the crew and shut down development of the documentary. Before returning to Fahrenheit 11/9, Moore focused on putting on a Broadway show, The Terms of My Surrender, which ran for 12 weeks.

Production of the documentary eventually resumed with between $4 million and $5 million in private funding. As part of filming, Moore made a clandestine visit to the Florida resort Mar-a-Lago owned by President Trump and mingled at the resort for 15 minutes before being escorted out by security.

Release:

Fahrenheit 11/9 had its world premiere on September 6, 2018 at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival. Moore also screened Fahrenheit 11/9 in his hometown of Flint, Michigan on September 10.

Briarcliff initially considered releasing the documentary in July 2018. It used a theatrical release date optimization program and decided on September 21; Deadline Hollywood reported, "[It] will arguably be one of the only fresh wide choices out there for sophisticated adults, and will launch six weeks before the November 6 [US] mid-term elections."

Fahrenheit 11/9 was released on DVD and Blu Ray in North America on the 18th of December, 2018.

Theatrical run:

Briarcliff Entertainment released the documentary in 1,719 theaters in the United States and Canada on September 21, 2018, the widest-ever for a Moore film; it was released alongside Life Itself, The House With a Clock in Its Walls, and Assassination Nation.[13] Based on early tracking, Fahrenheit 11/9 was initially expected to gross $4–10 million in its opening weekend in the United States and Canada. Variety said the opening-weekend gross "won't come close to trumping" Fahrenheit 9/11, which grossed $23.9 million at 868 theaters in the United States and Canada. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it an overall positive score of 82%, including an average 4.5 out of 5 stars. After making just $1.1 million on its first day, weekend projections were lowered to $3 million. The film went on to debut to just $3.1 million, finishing eighth with a per-theater average of $1,804. Deadline Hollywood noted the film should have begun a limited run in larger cities (such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and Chicago, where it ended up performing best) and built up positive word-of-mouth, instead of going wide to over 1,000 theaters in its opening weekend. It fell 63% in its second weekend to $1.1 million, finishing 12th. To date, it has grossed $6.4 million domestically. By the end of its theatrical run the film $6.4 million domestically, one of the lowest totals of Moore's career, and the worst of any of his films that received a wide release.

Reception:

When Fahrenheit 11/9 premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, The Hollywood Reporter said critical response was "positive overall". The Associated Press reported, "Film critics in Toronto largely hailed it as Moore's most vital film in years ... though others wondered if his Hitler rhetoric wasn't too extreme. More conservative reaction from outside the left-leaning movie world was, as expected, less enthusiastic." The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes assigned the film an approval rating of 81%, based on 160 reviews assessed as positive or negative; the average rating among the reviews is 7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Fahrenheit 11/9 finds Michael Moore in fine fighting form, delivering a political call to action that ranks among his most effective works." On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 69 out of 100, based on 46 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave the film three out of four stars, saying that "Fahrenheit 11/9 is ultimately Moore's best film in years because its message is really simple and nonpartisan: get mad about something and do something about it" and added, "With a new issue being debated every day, is it any wonder that Fahrenheit 11/9 has an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach? After all, Moore argues, rather convincingly, that what matters is that we care about something." Owen Gleiberman, reviewing for Variety, said Moore explored more issues than criticizing Trump, writing: "[Moore] makes the point that Donald Trump has always committed corruptions and outrages in plain sight. It's not that we don't see them; it's that he has a gift for getting people not to mind them" and that "Fahrenheit 11/9 would be better if it didn't romanticize the new wave of progressive action (which, incidentally, I believe in) as if it were the second coming. Yet the movie, in its way, summons something ominous and powerful. It's not a screed — it's a warning. It says, quite wisely: Take action now, or you may no longer have the opportunity to do so."

The Hollywood Reporter's Deborah Young found that the documentary had "a pretty unfocused target" with going beyond Trump and said, "The multiple targets and multiple threads which weave in and out of Fahrenheit 11/9 make it feel jumpy at times and less focused than Moore's docs ... Nonetheless, there is much food for thought in the film, shot with the director's characteristic passion, flair, wicked sense of humor and willingness to push the envelope."

In The Wall Street Journal John Anderson wrote, "Almost the entire movie is lifted from other sources, and then edited in a way that makes his enemies (do they know they’re his enemies?) look as foolish as possible. ... Mr. Moore can’t help himself, he uses footage of Adolf Hitler lip-syncing a Trump speech. Much has been made of Mr. Trump’s questionable maturity. He has a kindred spirit in Michael Moore."
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