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SICKO, by Michael Moore

MICHAEL MOORE ATTACKS AMERICAN HEALTH

After BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE (2002) and FAHRENHEIT 911 (Golden Palm in Cannes 2004), the explicit documentary-maker Michael Moore is still the active voice against the American castes which ‘democratically’ assault the USA. His new documentary SICKO exposes an American population abandoned by the health system and the greed of the private health.


It might be convenient to go on explaining Michael Moore’s explicit method. He keeps on showing himself in the film (in SICKO only in the second part of the film) with his big body and a head full of questions, interacting with the ones interviewed and leading them according to his thoughts and opinions.
It is said that Michael Moore manipulates and fakes documentaries. The American intelligentsia, at service of status quo knows how to make intrigues against its combatants. They have the highest budgets in the American nation for that. It doesn’t appall Michael Moore. On the contrary. Each new docu-drama-denouncement of his is more successful and is sold at prices never before reached for documentaries in the history of cinema.


What Moore can do, at most, is hide some information to make his viewpoints more dramatic. But this isn’t new either, in the history of cinema, which was born documenting, repeating some takes, deleting others, all to give more veracity to action and to its timing.
SICKO, a pun to summarize the idea around the “sick business”, is a strong attack to the health system in the USA, manipulated by lobbies of the insurance industry and pharmaceutical laboratories. Moore made a precious discovery for his new film. An audio tape with President Nixon, in 1971, during his government, saying that to impel people to the private health system, it is only a matter of worsening the public service.


Two people interviewed in SICKO reveal how they used to work in insurance companies to increase profit: denying as much as they could the services to patients in the hours of most dramatic need. The documentary starts with an absurd scene: a man stitching his own torn knee because, says Moore in voice over, he has no private health insurance. He also interviews people who were smashed by private health. A widow talks about her husband who died of cancer because the health company wouldn’t cover bone marrow transplantation, under the argument it would have been an “experimental surgery”. To give an idea of the unlimited list of hidden items in private insurance contracts, Moore imitates the moving charts in “Star Wars” with its theme song.


Michael Moore starts to appear when he compares American health with other countries which treat their citizens infinitely better. He goes to Canada, France and England again, where doctors make home visits in the middle of the night without charging anything. If we go deep in the matter, we have an insignificant omission of the filmmaker. The real charge, which the film hides, is that a private medical visit in France costs 50 euros, but it is refundable. It is an innocent omission that doesn’t escape the main focus: the health system in the USA is a great business, as many of the branches of interest of central power. But to reach astronomic profit, public health was thrown away. The greatest world power has the 38th position in the ranking, only above Slovenia, a former Soviet republic.


The equally millionaire side of lawyers, serving the same corporations that sell health and won’t deliver, would already be mobilizing actions in justice to stop and intimidate the distribution of SICKO in the United States. They want to avoid SICKO from being, in the universe of medicine, an excellent self-medication to gain conscience.


60th Cannes Festival official selection, with special presentation.


More information in :
www.festival-cannes.org

English version: Laura Rebessi