Spoiling It

"Spoiling It" – Etwas verderben.

Today was an absolutely gorgeous day here north of Boston. The temperature was around 25 degrees, a nice breeze carried a light sea scent, puffy white clouds scattered an otherwise perfectly blue sky, a day where you need to be outside. I did spent the morning outside with exercising and some work around the house and my plan for the afternoon was to see Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. I was afraid of spoiling the day and mood with, what I expected to be, a very sobering movie. While my frame of mind right after the movie did remind me of how I felt in March 2003 at the time of the invasion: extremely uncomfortable, angry, and in disbelieve, I also felt wide awake, very much alive and glad that such expressions of opinion are able to exist and that they are able to attract such a huge audience. Despite the beautiful day, the theater was completely packed at 4:00 in the afternoon.

By and large I agree with this New York Times review, "...while Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" will be properly debated on the basis of its factual claims and cinematic techniques, it should first of all be appreciated as a high-spirited and unruly exercise in democratic self-expression. Mixing sober outrage with mischievous humor and blithely trampling the boundary between documentary and demagoguery, Mr. Moore takes wholesale aim at the Bush administration, whose tenure has been distinguished, in his view, by unparalleled and unmitigated arrogance, mendacity and incompetence."

I highly recommend seeing the movie and I am glad that such self-expression is still possible. Not a spoiled day at all, a very good day.