Where To Invade Next

Film (2015)

Cinematography by Rick Rowley, Jayme Roy
Film Editing by Pablo Proenza, Todd Woody Richman, Tyler H. Walk

This fabulous outing by the irrepressible Michael Moore has many of the features of his earlier works, but is done with such a light and positive touch that it makes it not only incisive but sweetly optimistic and entertaining.

The range of countries and characters that Moore investigates in the film is quite remarkable.

He speaks with a handsome middle-aged Italian couple who describe their many annual weeks of vacation from their blue-collar jobs. He’s a cop and she also does something quite down to earth and as they begin to list their three weeks here and their two weeks there and the rest of the days off, and as we see them golden bodied and bikini adorned enjoying their lives together, one’s American jaw drops open. Of course, there’s Michael Moore, with his jaggedly shaven face, his overweight frame, and his omnipresent baseball cap, smiling in appreciation and egging them on.

Off he goes to Ducati, an Italian motorcycle manufacturer, and interviews the CEO, who can’t speak enough about the need to provide enough vacation to his employees for them to have a good quality of life. Are you kidding me? Moore seems to ask, dumbfounded with pleasure at every turn.

And that answer is not unique in Italy, as Moore interviews three sibling co-owners of an Italian clothing manufacturer.

In Slovenia, he investigated higher education, interviewing a few American students who showed up there because – well – it’s free. Yes, Slovenia offers free higher education, and apparently, according to one of the American students, it’s top notch – to Slovenians and foreigners. Hey, why not?

Finland, which did not have brilliant secondary school education back in the 1960s, took a long look at what it was doing and revamped the whole thing. Now its educational system is considered the best in the world. How do they do it? Long hours? Lots of homework? Nope, just the opposite. Barely any homework is given, and the length of the school day is short. Teacher after teacher talks about the need for kids to have time to play, to visit with their families, to do music and sports. It’s really unbelievable, and it works. And one of the major things that all Finnish teachers seem to agree on about the system in the United States is that standardized tests should be abandoned. Yay!

In France, Moore begins to show, quite brilliantly, the preparation of what looks like gourmet food. Just as one’s mouth is watering, he reveals that the location is the local elementary school where kids routinely dine on wonderful stuff. Every day, there’s a selection of great cheese. We see kids eating some kind of scallop dish, and watch them dine peacefully and sociably with one another. Pictures of American school lunches shown to the chef at the school draws a remark about how sorry he feels for the kids who have to eat the stuff.

In Portugal, Moore interviews two cops who describe the complete lack of drug laws there and the relative inconsequential issue of drug enforcement. Moore then contrasts that with what has gone on in the US, and shows awful scenes of American cops brutalizing people in drug arrests. Moore also notes the preponderance of African-American men in American jails because of drug arrests and observes that the so-called red states of the American South might well have been able to retain their Republican majorities by incarcerating a healthy percentage of their African American male population and making it impossible for them to vote.

The incredibly enlightened jail system in Norway is shown, and a remarkable interview with the father of one of the child victims of the horrific attack on the island near Oslo is included at some length. In that interview, the father, despite his enormous personal pain, refuses to advocate the death penalty for the awful perpetrator of the crimes.

Iceland’s indictment of the leaders of a major illegal financial coup is profiled as an alternative to what the United States did after the crash of 2008 in which the shenanigans of leaders of multiple financial institutions here were not at all called onto the mat. Instead their institutions were bailed out by the government.

This is stellar Moore. It is wonderfully shot by Rick Rowley and Jayme Roy, and brilliantly edited by Pablo Proenza, Todd Woody Richman and Tyler H. Walk, resulting in a visually and narratively engaging tapestry that brings together into a kind of seamless whole the wide variety of stories and scenes that constitute it.

A very well done film, it is at once entertaining, insightful and inspiring.

– BADMan