Moore & Co.: The most controversial documentaries

By STEVEN SNYDER - TimeOut Film Critic	October 9, 2009

There are those documentaries that record the commonplace, and then those docs that rip the lid off life as we know it – that dare us to look at reality in a whole new way. Michael Moore has always been a filmmaker geared towards the latter. His latest film, "Capitalism: A Love Story," is a rousing, populist call to arms against a financial industry that’s been protected by the government even as the average Joe has suffered. It’s a controversial expose, released at a most controversial time; we take a look back at five of the other most explosive documentaries ever released. "An Inconvenient Truth" Not just one of the most controversial documentaries of all time, but also one of the most influential, "An Inconvenient Truth" turned the tide of public opinion on the issue of global warming – and also became an unexpected box office smash at multiplexes across the country. Jumping between Al Gore’s science and his personal life, director Davis Guggenheim gave America a lecturer they could believe, a man with a heart of gold who could also manage to extrapolate how a bar graph pointing to rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would affect our weather and water supplies. "Trouble the Water" Fury is made palpable in "Trouble the Water," the Oscar-nominated reconstruction of the terrors that ravaged a post-Katrina New Orleans, told not through interviews or archival news clips but from the first-hand footage shot by a stranded resident who scrambled as the water rose. Offering us an insider’s view of a submerged Ninth Ward, the film introduces us to the defiant and inspiring Kimberly Rivers Roberts, an aspiring rapper who refuses to let the situation defeat her. Turning away from the political rhetoric that filled the airwaves in the weeks and months that followed the storm, "Trouble the Water" takes us back into the uncertainty of the moment, as neighbors rallied together to find a way to safety. The result is an apocalyptic travelogue focused on resilience and determination, featuring at the center of it all as irrepressible a personality as we’ve ever seen on the silver screen. "Roger & Me" In the grand scheme of things, "Roger & Me" didn’t change all that much. It didn’t alter this country’s sprint into an era of corporate outsourcing; it didn’t reverse the blight that by then had encased director Michael Moore’s hometown of Flint, Mich. But this passionate story of the town that General Motors abandoned when it shut down the auto factory did alter the audience’s perception of David and Goliath. As Moore took his cameras to GM’s headquarters, as he called out CEO Roger Smith by name for approving the business decisions that led to the destruction of Flint, the almighty corporation was held to account and given a discernable personality. "Roger & Me" altered the way filmmakers started thinking about tackling such massive issues as international trade – proving that there were emotional and provocative ways in which these topics could be discussed, deconstructed and challenged. With "Roger & Me," Moore launched not just his own career as a feature film rabble-rouser but a whole new subgenre of documentary filmmaking, peeling away the glossy facades of the Fortune 500 and revealing the humanitarian hardships being perpetrated under the guise of quarterly profits. "Super Size Me" In the five years since "Super Size Me," the number of films taking on fast food chains and the commercialized farming industry has skyrocketed. But when Morgan Spurlock first made a name for himself with this fast-food-only-diet documentary, it was a shocking sight, to see a man’s health fall apart on the big screen. Claiming that a month’s world of McDonald’s food affected everything from his energy levels to his sex drive – at one point, Spurlock even vomits as his body seemingly rejects the processed grub – there were those who claimed that the filmmaker was exaggerating the experience for theatrical effect. Which may well be true. But it nevertheless galvanized a whole generation to rethink that nightly burger run – and just about everything else they were putting into their bodies. "The Fog of War" The revelations were stunning, candid and plentiful in Errol Morris’ Oscar-winning documentary "Fog of War" – and also completely unexpected. Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and a prime architect of the Vietnam War, agreed to talk with Morris for an hour or so, under the guise of a TV special. But as he worked with the director, looking into Morris’ "Interrotron," which allowed the two to look each other in the eye, McNamara continued talking. For 20 hours, the 85-year-old reflected on both the war he helped to escalate and his earlier experiences in World War II, serving as a key aide to the vicious General LeMay – recalling in one sobering moment how LeMay admitted that if America had lost the war, surely some of our top strategists would have been tried as war criminals, called to account for firebombings and civilian deaths. Something happened in these interviews that went beyond a simple reconstruction of history. The elderly McNamara was candid, comprehensive and, at times, contrite. The film, as a result, was an unguarded and complex journey into the mind of a man who presided over some of humanity’s darkest hours.