Michael Moore’s “Where To Invade Next” follows the director as he travels to foreign countries, not to invade their land and enslave their people, but to plunder and bring back home their better quality of life. The humorous beginning of the film, imagining U.S. military leaders asking Moore for advice to repair their mistakes, sets a lighter tone compared to what we usually associate with his films.
The lightness continues as the film turns in to a glorified travelogue, where Moore discovers how the Italians have eight weeks paid vacation, French school children eat multi-course gourmet meals for lunch, Finland has one of the most successful public education system in the world, and Iceland prosecutes and put corrupt bankers in jail while being led by a female president.
Obviously Moore is seeking out the highs and not the lows of each country, and the common factor he finds is a culture of people willing to be less rich in order for their neighbor to be less poor. And people can afford to be more compassionate in societies where they don’t have to worry about surviving paycheck to paycheck. This depiction enhances the contrast of Americans competing with each other in a game of winner-take-all economic survival, worsened by a dwindling middle class and increased income inequality. And yet the film shows optimism about the American future, almost as a plea towards the end, asking its people not to forget where all these great socialist incentives came from.
The documentary has been a favorite since it premiered in September at the Toronto Film Festival, winning numerous awards along the way and is now on the Oscar shortlist for Feature Documentary Nominees. This is a wonderful, important, and very funny film. Don’t miss!
“Where to Invade Next” will be released in the US on limited screens in New York and Los Angeles on December 23, and will be released nationally Feb 12, 2015.
See the trailer here:
