In a message dated 6/29/2004 4:00:08 PM Eastern Daylight Time, straker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes: http://www.newyorker.com/critics/cinema/?040628crci_cinema ____ Thanks to Stephen for posting this rather even-handed review of the film. My last point about motives preceding judgments was raised by Denby in this acute paragraph. -EY ____ The great documentary filmmakers of todayâ??Frederick Wiseman, Marcel Ophuls, and Andrew Jarecki (of â??Capturing the Friedmansâ??)â??know that truth in an absolute sense is unattainable. Itâ??s not even imaginable. Who would validate it? Who could say that another interpretation besides the filmmakerâ??s was out of the question? Movies are made by men and women, not by gods hurling thunderbolts of certitude. But the great documentary filmmakers at least make an attempt, however inadequate, compromised, or hopeless, to arrive at a many-sided understanding of some complex situation. Michael Moore is not that kind of filmmaker, nor does he want to be. He calls himself a satirist, but heâ??s less a satirist than a polemicist, a practitioner of mocking political burlesque: he doesnâ??t discover many new things but punches up what he already knows or suspects; he doesnâ??t challenge or persuade an audience but tickles or irritates it. Heâ??s too slipshod intellectually to convince many except the already convinced, too eager to throw another treated log onto the fire of righteous anger. ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html