Fahrenheit 9/11

This isn't really Minnesota-related, but I thought I would share my experiences in seeing Fahrenheit 9/11 yesterday.

I was waiting around for a call from a recruiter until five, so that mean I couldn't go to any earlier shows. Despite the fact that the theater closest to me was playing the movie on three screens, every single show on Friday night was sold out. Thus, I had to go to a suburban theater, in this case the AMC theater at Southdale in Edina.

I arrived at six to try and buy tickets for the seven o'clock show. No dice: sold out. I bought my ticket for the 9:55 show and vowed to come back later.

When I arrived, there was a long line of people waiting to get into the auditorium. The wait before the movie was interminably long, longer than any movie I can remember in the past decade. During this time, a patron was thrown out by the management for handing out anti-Bush bumper stickers. This brought quite a negative reaction from the crowd.

The movie itself was phenomenal. It made me laugh, then it made me cry. Actually, that's a pretty good summary for how I feel: I am tired of having a government that makes me feel like crying whenever I see what it does. I am sure that a lot of people in that theater agreed with me. When it was over, it got a thorough round of applause, though not as healthy as what has happened at other theaters (perhaps the fact that the movie ended after midnight had something to do with it).

My verdict: go see this movie. As far as I can tell, there are no glaring factual errors, despite what some critics have said. More importantly, the most powerful parts of the film are those parts when you see and hear what soldiers and their families think about the war in Iraq. That's not fact, that's opinion, and I think that so many people are afraid of seeing this movie because many of the opinions are not those that have been on the news.

There is a reason this film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.