ROGER & ME
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: A biting documentary about the destruction GM does by closing plants in Flint, Michigan. It is razor-sharp and bitter. Moore's film is a compilation of footage he took and pieces from stock footage, documentaries, television, etc. Moore rarely has to use narration to tell the audience the point of a sequence; the point is clear from the footage he chooses. The film has a very effective documentary style. Rating: high +2.
Michael Moore will likely turn out to be a flash in the pan. He has a lot to say about a subject he has been intimately involved with, but it seems unlikely there is any other subject he will be able to make another film about with such wit and insight. But the film he did make may be a real shot in the arm for documentary filmmaking. How long has it been since a documentary has made it to first-run popular (as opposed to art) theaters? ROGER & ME has, and with very few overt jokes, it is one of the funniest films of the year. It seems amazing that by filming a true story as it actually is happening Moore could have come up with a film at once as funny and as sad as ROGER & ME, but that is the power of the documentary film maker and editor.
ROGER & ME is Moore's funny, bitter account of the decline of Flint, Michigan, due to its plant closings, and of Moore's own attempts to interview Roger Smith, the chairman of General Motors. Smith clearly did not want to be interviewed by Moore and it is easy to understand why. Moore's interviews turn everyone he talks to into pate'. So time after time, Smith--or people who work for Smith--foil Moore's attempts at an interview and they become the film's running gag. Happening once or twice it would look like daily business, but when Moore is foiled time after time Smith just ends up looking worse and worse. And just as surely as we occasionally have national heroes, Moore has succeeded in making Roger Smith a national villain.
But the film is more than just an indictment of Smith or even of the auto industry. Moore has captured on film Middle America with every pimple and pore showing. He shows hare-brained schemes for reviving Flint, such as the GM-built theme park Autoworld, built under the assumption that if GM is in love with cars, the whole country is in love with cars. It featured a puppet auto-worker singing love songs to a robot assembler which Moore notes will replace him. GM brought in celebrities such as Pat Boone, Anita Bryant, and Robert Schuller to spread messages of silly optimism. "Turn your hurt into a halo," Schuller advises with as straight a face as Schuller ever has. When people are in real trouble there is little that can be said to make it better and Moore's camera zooms in on the foolishness of trying to fix things up with mere words. One woman becomes an Amway distributor and seems to have gone off the deep end on somebody's theory that everybody has a "season of color" like a zodiac sign, and you must get cosmetics and clothing in colors determined by your season of color. The theory sounds like Elizabeth Arden meets New Age thinking. Another woman goes into raising rabbits for pets or meat and cheerfully kills and flays a rabbit for the camera.
GM also gets "The Newlywed Game"'s Bob Eubanks, who fails from Flint, to come to town and tell people how great Flint is. While Moore is doing a number on Roger Smith, Eubanks is doing a number on himself that could be just as bad.
While I do not have any particular respect for somebody who is a black belt at karate, I can respect a perfectly placed karate kick. While I do not always respect Moore's methods, his film is a perfectly placed kick to the auto industry and all those who support it. This is not fair documentary filmmaking, but it is entertaining and it is effective. It has precisely the effect on the audience that it was intended to have. I would give it a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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