Rating:

We’ve created a monster. In constantly tearing down and scrutinizing everything said or shown in Michael Moore’s films—then paying him for the pleasure—his critics and fans alike appear to have beaten him.

That’s the main thing I was thinking as I walked away after watching Sicko, a film which is meant to educate, but ends up being nothing more than a montage showing us how sad it is when bad things happen to good people.

Moore’s previous films have given all but their most ideologically oppositional viewers the impression that he is an intensely compassionate man, trying to convince us that his point of view and solution set is the correct one.

Documentaries, they’re not—but many found his arguments to be fiercely persuasive. He’s a staunch Leftist, and proud of it, but in times past he at least tried to support his conclusions and suggestions with statistics and expert-opinions.

Such is not the case with this film, in which statistics are scarce, experts are nearly non-existent, and even file footage is rare.

Yet his biased ideology is even more on display, as he heaps praise on France’s liberal government, visits an Old Laborite in England (whose bronze bust of Karl Marx is lovingly admired), and parades dozens of health-care horror stories across the screen without thought as to how representative they are of the larger population.

And I blame us. He avoids specifics to appease his critics, and trumpets his liberalism because he knows his audience has narrowed exclusively to the left-wing.

Moore doesn’t even appear to be aware anymore of when he’s being offensively unconvincing. After playing file footage of Newt Gingrich declaring “Go ask anyone in Canada just how much they like their National Health Care,” Moore gleefully narrates “Good idea! And who better to ask than my grandparents!”

Who better? How about: anyone.

Anecdotal evidence is the very last thing one should use to prove a point, and that’s without even considering the fact that those giving their opinions are the flesh, blood, and avid supporters of the person trying to prove the point.

Granted, Moore was making a bit of a joke when he introduced his grandparents as the answer to Gingrich’s challenge, and the audience gets it. But then he fails to provide anything more significant afterward.

He visits a health clinic waiting room, where many happy Canadians tell you that they don’t have to wait a long time to get treatment. Then he talks to an ex-member of Parliament who assures us, speaking apparently for all his co-citizens, that Canadians believe National Health Care is important to their society and appreciate it very much.

Then that’s it. No opinion polls, no numbers. The majority of his audience surely will leave the theater thinking that all Canadians are A-Okay with their system, but more astute viewers will leave feeling less confident about what Canadians really think.

I don’t understand this, because Canadian satisfaction levels are consistently favorable, ranging between 65 and 75 percent satisfied. These numbers are not ideal, but they tend to support Moore’s argument. Why he left them out is beyond me, but I had to look them up just to see whether Moore avoided them because they disproved him.

Moore doesn’t stop with the anecdotes at any point. Instead of telling you how much prescription medicine costs on average in Great Britain, he walks into one specific pharmacy and asks about their prices (5.65 Pounds across the board). Instead of finding out whether doctors suffer under a nationalized system, he speaks to one doctor. Instead of telling us the tax rate in France, he asks one family whether their taxes are too high to lead a prosperous and fulfilling lifestyle.

I suspect this revised and inferior style of filmmaking is due, more than anything, to Moore trying to avoid critics disproving his statistics and quotes by finding their own, which is inevitable.

But this is also due to the fact that he appears to be entirely complacent. He’s reached a point in his career where he’s so divisive, the majority of people who decide to watch his films will be likely to take what he says as the gospel truth.

The climax of the film is an emotional trip to Cuba with three 9/11 rescue workers, who are having a hard time getting or affording health care—one of whose symptoms are a direct result of his work at Ground Zero.

And it’s a moving moment when a woman is able to purchase her asthma medication, which costs over 100 dollars in the U.S., for 19 cents in Cuba. No one explains to the audience, however, how much that shocking price has to do with the purchasing power of the American Dollar in third-world nations.

Moore does have points—valuable points. It’s true that in America we spend over 2,500 dollars per person on health care, while most nationalized systems cost around 250 dollars per person (proportional taxes included). It’s true that America’s health care system is ranked 36th in the world, surrounded by the third-world and far lower down the list than all other industrialized nations.

But his delivery is flawed, his evidence is lacking (even, bafflingly, when it’s available and supports his viewpoint), and his talent has waned.

I won’t say until his next effort whether Moore has completely given up on crafting a traditional, if subjective, documentary—but Sicko is definitely nothing more than a commercial for nationalized health care, and disappointingly, ineffectively so.

If You Hated This, You Will Also Totally Hate:

• Chariots of Tedium
• Facebook: Your Source for Astute Film Analysis
• Cannes Likes Indy! …sort of
• Is Dumbledore Gay?