Sicko (2007)

K: In case you've been living in a box for the past month or so, I'll start by saying that Sicko is the latest Michael Moore movie. I haven't seen ALL of Michael Moore's movies, but I can say that this is the best one that I've seen since Bowling for Columbine.

Most of the criticism of this movie revolves around the typical Michael Moore over-the-top moments (a bit near the end arouses particular ire...I won't describe the scene since everyone should have the joy of seeing it for the first time.)

However, I find simple complaints that it is propaganda pretty unsatisfying. You don't really watch a Michael Moore movie for the fair and balanced perspective, any more than you watch videos produced by big oil to get the real scoop on drilling rights. Propaganda itself isn't necessarily a bad thing--indeed, it can be a helpful tool. The key is that the propaganda has to be supporting something larger--an idea that merits a one-sided view. Fahrenheit 911 wasn't bad simply because it was propaganda...it was bad because it wasn't anything else.

Sicko is different, because while Moore spends a lot of screen time taking digs at the American medical industry, he is ultimately probing at something deeper. It is the same thing that he was getting at in Bowling for Columbine. Namely--why do we, as a people and as a country, care so little about each other? More specifically, why do we care so little about those people who most need care? Because this is propaganda, the question is asked in terms of comparisons--why aren't we more like the British, the French, the Canadians?--but in the end, the comparisons are almost moot. We require a level of self-sufficiency in this country that defies all reason, and that deserves a serious self-examination.

But despite the heavy questions that he's dealing with, and the terrible, life-or-death stories that are being told, the rhetoric in Sicko is lighter--less bitter--than either the 911 movie or (if I recall) Bowling for Columbine. The whole thing comes off as almost...hopeful. Maybe it's just that when compared with problems of government ineptitude, economic change, and epidemic violence, reforming the health care industry doesn't seem like such a difficult problem any more.

R: In a similar vein, I think the point of the movie was to make a bit more concrete the idea of a society where health care just isn't a constant concern. The debate over government health care is often reduced to one of cost, and I think Moore's point is that there's another benefit to centralization, and that's not having to base, well, many of the decisions in your life around insurance. It's a tricky thing to quantify, but I think it's pretty obvious that it matters.