Michael Moore makes complicated subjects approachable by giving us someone to follow and someone to question. We value his humour and persistence, but in Roger & Me the residents matter more than his pursuit of the chairman.
Fi1m perspective
In Roger & Me (1989), Michael Moore goes looking for General Motors chairman Roger B. Smith, wanting him to answer for the factory closures in Flint. It is an effective invitation into a documentary: we have someone to follow and a question we understand. Moore makes the subject accessible, although the damage soon proves more interesting than the search. We recommend the film for the people he encounters, with reservations about how he uses them.
That debut established his combination of reporting, satirical humour and a conspicuous place in front of the camera. His later documentaries include Bowling for Columbine (2002) and Sicko (2007), while Capitalism: A Love Story (2009) returned to corporate influence. Producer Kathleen Glynn is among his collaborators. Even with other people behind the films, Moore's on-screen role encourages us to treat each inquiry as a personal undertaking.
Roger & Me shows why that involvement matters. Flint is his home town, and his determination to get an answer keeps the closures from becoming a distant economic story. We were distressed by the residents trying to get by after the factory jobs disappeared; their efforts to survive made the losses felt more sharply than the hunt for Smith did. Moore is most affecting here when he lets those people occupy our attention without needing to remain its chief attraction.
The difficulty is that the same residents can become material for a joke. Moore's anger at General Motors does not ensure that the laughter always lands on the company. When somebody's attempt to survive looks ridiculous, being on their side is not enough to make the scene fair. The pursuit of Smith has another weakness: it makes an enormous economic problem look too much like one man's fault. We understand why a documentary needs a manageable story, but here the simplification risks making the explanation too easy.
There is no need for Moore to give up the humour; a solemn Roger & Me would lose much of its appeal. We would rather he gave the people trying to survive a little more protection from it. Start with the debut, and pay at least as much attention to the people answering as to the man asking.
Biography
Michael Moore is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and author. He was born on 23 April 1954 in Flint, Michigan. After founding the alternative newspaper the Flint Voice in 1976 and briefly editing Mother Jones magazine, he used a settlement from a wrongful-dismissal claim to fund his first film.
Moore made his directorial debut with the documentary Roger & Me (1989), which he also wrote, produced and appeared in. He is known for the documentaries Bowling for Columbine (2002), Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), Sicko (2007), Capitalism: A Love Story (2009), Where to Invade Next (2015), Michael Moore in TrumpLand (2016) and Fahrenheit 11/9 (2018), as well as the earlier Canadian Bacon (1995) and The Big One (1997). He has also written and starred in the television series TV Nation and The Awful Truth.
