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Sicko review
:. Director: Michael Moore
:. Genre: Documentary
:. Running Time: 2:00
:. Year: 2007
:. Country: USA
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Since winning a Palme d'Or for his scathing anti-Bush attack, a mixture of feverish expectation and circumspect mistrust hangs over the work of Michael Moore. Presented out of competition at the 60th Festival of Cannes, Sicko takes on Uncle Sam's health system, forcing comparisons between the services proposed in different countries, including England, Cuba and France.
And if it were still necessary to dissect the director's demonstration system, a.k.a. The Moore Method, all things considered, it's in the section shot in Paris where one clearly realizes, once and for all, at which point Moore's films raise even more as propaganda rather than as documentaries. Where the art of not lying, but to serve a speech, a proposition, a point of view, by truncating information, by omitting certain truths to deliver general information which the audience will take as fact. So we must point out to Mr. Moore that, with all due respect to these idyllic shots of couples locked in embrace in Parisian parks, that the right to higher education, although less expensive than in the United States, must still be paid for, that a couple earning 8 000 € and living in a large Parisian apartment does not represent the majority of most of the capital's inhabitants, that to strike is a right but that the popular momentum in the streets does not become Woodstock, that doctors can make home visits in the middle of the night, but that the trip will cost you...
This demonstration of incomplete information counts on the audience's ignorance. Moore uses other means to convince: reasoning by absurdity. Thus we learn that the only place in the United States where high tech medical care is delivered free is at the prison in Guantanamo. Manipulating the witnesses he meets throughout his ersatz of a documentary, here our troublemaker charters three boats to take his new friends who have been forsaken by insurance companies on board towards the military base, to which they will naturally not have access. So as usual, Moore takes his public hostage, aiming at emotion, lightness and humor. An overused, dangerous method, but where one wonders about honesty.
Moland Fengkov
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