Sicko

Michael Moore is one of the premiere propaganda artists of our day. Underneath that congenial, teddy-bear exterior lies a brilliant mind with a razor-sharp wit. He’s a polarizing figure, largely because of his talent at skewering public figures with their own hypocrisy. After two wildly successful and thought-provoking documentaries (Bowling For Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11), the expectations were sky-high for Sicko – his look at the American health care system.

It certainly looks like a perfect target for Moore – a bloated, self-serving, corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy. After navigating the complex minefields of gun control and partisan politics, audiences should rightfully expect a spectacular slam-dunk. Besides some free-spending lobbyists, who could disagree with the idea that our health care system is woefully inadequate?

It’s very surprising, then, that Sicko is such a disappointment. The high expectations and consequences of failure seem to have intimidated Moore, and really inhibited him from doing what he does best. From beginning to end, it feels like Moore has finally found an issue that is too precious to satirize, and without that edge, it wallows in soft-focus sentiment.

Sicko is jumpy and repetitive, and suffers from an uncharacteristic lack of reasoning. In many places, it feels like a rough cut, lurching from scene to scene like bone grinding on bone without any connective tissue in between. There are two false starts, a couple of obligatory shots at Bush and the Iraq war, and some of the least eloquent narration that Moore has ever written. At one point, he forces himself to chuckle at one of his own jokes, sounding a lot like his presidential nemesis. The film isn’t short on content; many of the interviews have shocking revelations about the health-care industry, but every one hangs on for an awkward moment before the film flat-footedly lumbers on.

Worst of all, too often Moore condescends to his audience. At a dinner in Paris with a bunch of American ex-pats, Moore feigns ham-fisted surprise at the free and generous services provided by the French health care system. He comes across like an infomercial pitchman, throwing his hands up in mock-incredulity as if he’s announcing “You mean there’s more!” It’s unnecessary, and so hucksterish that it’s credibility-damaging.

Just as bad is a complete lack of information about any downsides to nationalized health care systems he reveres. Only one side of the issue is presented so relentlessly, that reasonable minds can’t help but wonder what’s being held back. In his other films, Moore presented some of the basic arguments from the opposition and attempted to answer them. Here, he’s working so hard to sell Americans on the virtues of nationalized health care that you expect the film to end with a pitch to act now and get a free set of steak knives!

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What Moore did best in the past was to agitate the faceless entities at the top of the economic food chain by forcing them to confront the people at the bottom. Bowling For Columbine had a scathing scene where Moore took two boys to a Kmart to try and return (for a refund!) the bullets still lodged in their crippled bodies. In response, Kmart stopped selling ammunition. Fahrenheit 9/11 had a pithy scene where Moore tried to get the senators who voted for the Iraq war to enlist their children to go fight. After being universally rebuffed, he opined:

“I’ve always been amazed that the very people forced to live in the worst parts of town, go to the worst schools, and who have it the hardest are always the first to step up, to defend us. They serve so that we don’t have to. They offer to give up their lives so that we can be free. It is remarkably their gift to us. And all they ask for in return is that we never send them into harm’s way unless it is absolutely necessary.”

Sicko has several jaw-dropping insurance horror stories, but Moore does nothing but join in the chorus of sorrow. What’s desperately missing is any sense of anger or confrontation. In the case of the four year old girl who died because her health plan wouldn’t pay for treatment in one hospital’s emergency room, where is the attempt to interview the doctors who refused to treat her? Or the health care agency who denied her coverage? Why didn’t Moore put together one of his picket lines and march outside the doors of Kaiser Permanente until they got to speak with the woman who actually denied that coverage? Instead, her mom simply weeps on camera, we see an exterior shot of the hospital, and the film moves on.

What made Bowling For Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 so profound was their willingness to provoke the audience and portray an unexpected take on the issue. Whether you agreed or disagreed with Moore’s points, he presented them with such a uniquely sly twist that he forced you to think about the issue at hand. If anything, Sicko makes you contemplate the rewards of capitalism and the dream of the poor to one day become rich. The poor aren’t rising up to demand better treatment because someday they too dream of being rich, and able to get better treatment than everyone else.

In the end, Moore simply feels out of his element. He does his best work when sandwiched between two sharply divided sides of an issue, but this is an argument without an opponent. The controversial stunt at the climax – where he takes 9/11 rescue workers to Cuba for treatment – is more of an attack on the prison at Guantanamo Bay than a fight against HMOs.

This isn’t about gun control versus gun rights, or liberals versus republicans. He makes a half-hearted stab at pitting the “American public” versus “greedy corporate interests” but Moore seems reluctant to pick that fight for the first time in his career. There is an almost palpable sense that he is restraining himself, that he would really like to savage Bush, Nixon, and Kaiser-Permanente but that he’s holding himself back. In the end, Sicko is content to compile horror stories and sing the praises of nationalized health care. He might be right. In fact, he probably is right, which is what makes it such a shame that Moore didn’t go for the jugular when he had the chance.