Documentaries have the capacity to expose their filmmaker’s partiality, willingly or unwillingly, in a much stronger fashion than feature films can, for the simple reason that documentaries claim to portrait reality and to expose the truth. But what is the truth? Is one person, in this case, a filmmaker, capable of exposing the entire truth of a topic? Or do they simply expose mainly one side of it, their preferred side, their own understanding of the truth, which is usually a counterpoint to a dominant view or ideology? How effectively do documentaries reach out to people who do not share the views of the filmmaker and to the people who truly need to be made aware of a different angle to a certain situation? Many decent documentaries such as Why We Fight and Iraq for Sale end up mostly preaching to the choir, which certainly makes the choir feel good about their already more-or-less established convictions, but it does not do enough to make the other side question their own beliefs.

Therefore, it could be argued that some of the best documentaries are the ones that try to not convince the viewer of any truth, either by equitably showing both sides of an argument without adding a biased conclusion, or by skillfully threading the middle line between both sides, never really taking sides. Brilliant examples of this are Errol Morris’ The Fog of War and Marcel Ophüls’ The Memory of Justice. I suppose one could argue that there is always a trace of bias in all films or documentaries. Godard’s typical Godardian statement that ‘a tracking shot is a moral issue’ demonstrate that all aspects of filmmaking, from the location and movement of the camera, to the order in which the scenes are scripted to the final editing decisions, are all part of a deliberate decision by the filmmaker to tell a story according to his or her own opinion.

Michael Moore chose early on in his career to dispense with any attempt to hide his bias. He has embraced the documentary style as a means to fully express his opinion and to punch the side that he is trying to expose. In a sense, he has appropriated the truth and made it his. He also seems to know a thing or two about marketing and film promotion, which has allowed him to take the documentary style into a new realm of profitability and mass viewing. Throughout this process, he has made a lot of enemies, from the people he attacks in his films to others who simply do not enjoy the manipulative style of his work.

His manipulative style has never been felt so strongly, in my opinion, as in Sicko. Perhaps the reason I feel slightly let down by this documentary, compared to some of Moore’s earlier work, which I enjoyed, is that in Sicko, Moore engages in cultural comparisons. Having lived in five different countries, I am not one to shy away from the occasional cultural anthropological exercise, yet, in Sicko, I couldn’t help but feeling annoyed at how Moore chose, possibly even fabricated, the best in one country to compare it with the worst in another. This clear abuse of partiality and of the documentary medium reduced the believability and respectability of the film to such a level that the experience of watching it, however entertaining and interesting on many levels, became tainted and slightly spoiled.

That being said, for anyone not familiar with the US health system, watching Sicko can be illuminating. As with many aspects of American life, many health related decisions are based on money and profit (see The Corporation), and not, sadly, on need. Thanks to Henry Kaiser and to Richard Nixon, in the name of profit, people in dire need of assistance are left to die, the responsibility of no one but themselves. A perfect example of the sometimes very negative consequences of an ideology that places individual responsibility far above group responsibility.
I personally find it interesting that Moore portrays the English universal health system as clearly superior to the American one, even though after spending several years in both countries, I can attest that the English one, while offering care to everyone, does it, and this is naturally based on my own experiences, with means and methods far inferior to those found in the US. But I suppose that, as Michael Moore knows very well, it is possible to isolate a good experience in one country and to place it on the same level of comparison as a bad experience in another country.

Nonetheless, do watch Sicko and be enraged at a world that allows and encourages people to get rich on the death of others.