Hey, did you know that the Canadian health-care system is far superior to its American counterpart—compassionate rather than cutthroat, guaranteeing every citizen the medical assistance they need regardless of their income? And did you know that the British health-care system is also far superior to its American counterpart—compassionate rather than cutthroat, guaranteeing every citizen the medical assistance they need regardless of their income? And did you know that the French health care system is also far superior to its American counterpart—compassionate rather than cutthroat, guaranteeing every citizen the medical assistance they need regardless of their income?
Sicko isn’t a bad film, exactly, but anyone who’s ever seen even one of Michael Moore’s previous screeds-cum-documentaries could probably give a fairly accurate summary of its content, sight unseen. As in Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore leans heavily on admittedly affecting but patently manipulative sob stories, introducing us to various ailing Americans whose claims were inexplicably rejected, denied or even rescinded by their insurers. Trouble is, he has fewer facts and arguments to buttress the human-interest element this time—or, rather, the problem with the U.S. health-care system is so obvious (in a word: capitalism) that even the for-Dummies version requires only a few minutes of screen time. And so Moore drags us to country after country, so that we can see for ourselves the deductible-free paradise in which the rest of the civilized world lives. He’s right, of course—despite inevitable fudging over the tax issue, which he dismisses by showing us a few representative upper-middle-class families—but that doesn’t make it any more illuminating to be told the same thing repeatedly for two solid hours.
Indeed, Sicko often seems less like a movie than like an incredibly bloated episode of Moore’s defunct BBC series TV Nation, in which matters of policy inevitably took a back seat to goofy, self-congratulatory stunts. Here, the puckish pièce de résistance is an excursion to Guantánamo Bay with a group of 9/11 rescue workers who’ve been unable to obtain the care they need in the States. Having learned that suspected al Qaeda operatives have access to free medical attention in detainment, Moore merrily sails over there with a bullhorn and asks whether these national heroes don’t deserve the same consideration as Bush’s evildoers. Which, if you think about it for a minute (i.e., for 57 seconds longer than Moore apparently did), is rather like taking people who can’t afford a TV set to federal prison and demanding that they be allowed to watch the season finale of Heroes there. Granted, it’s a rhetorical gesture, but it’s a stupid rhetorical gesture, one that does nothing to crystallize this dauntingly complicated issue.
Then again, it’s not as if we’re exactly inundated with alternatives. At the Cannes film festival, where I first saw the movie—like almost everybody else, it seems, I’ve also rewatched portions of it on the Internet—I wound up in a heated argument with a European journalist who couldn’t comprehend how I, an American, could possibly find fault with Moore’s methods. “Who else in your country has the courage to say these things?” he wanted to know. Understanding that he meant “in the popular media,” I tried to make a distinction between “worthy” and “excellent,” citing the dramatically turgid but historically groundbreaking AIDS movie Philadelphia. “Point being,” I concluded, “that something can be important and necessary and admirable and yet still kinda suck.” And that, after nearly two decades, is more or less how I feel about Michael Moore. He’s a monumentally irritating force for good.
All the same, I must confess that I’m starting to sympathize with his vehement critics on the right. Late in Sicko, Moore reveals, with audible self-satisfaction, that he anonymously sent $12,000 to pay medical expenses for the wife of Jim Kenefick, the guy who runs the anti-Moore website Moorewatch.com. Which seems like a remarkably generous and altruistic act, until it dawns on you that its primary purpose was to make Moore look remarkably generous and altruistic, since his “anonymous” donation is now the last-laugh climax of a major motion picture. Tactics like this make me wish all the more fervently that the left could find a less Coulteresque demagogue.
Sicko
** 1/2
Directed by Michael Moore
Rated PG-13
Opens Friday