Creature of the Wheel

Michael Moore has a new film: Planet of the Humans. Directed by Jeff Gibbs but executive-produced and promoted by Moore, the film publicly bears the much more famous name, in both publicity for the film and criticism of it. I’ve been browsing critiques this morning while listening to White Zombie’s Astro-Creep: 2000 on repeat and trying to get this Underworld Breach deck to work on Arena and honestly just doing everything to avoid having to watch what some sources suggest is a pile of cold garbage: from a factual and political standpoint. As a fan and admirer of Moore, I’m disappointed he would put his name on something like this. But then, like the opening sample of Astro-Creep says, “perhaps you had better start from the beginning,” Eleven. Unfortunately, I think that involves me actually watching this movie and then coming back to the article.

For starters, Planet of the Humans is an excruciatingly terrible film. Gibbs comes across like a fanboy who’s watched too many Michael Moore movies (he’s credited as a producer on, among other films, both Fahrenheit 9/11 and 11/9) without really truly grasping what makes Moore a talented filmmaker. To say nothing of Gibbs’ false arguments and cherry-picked clips that have been noted elsewhere, the film absolutely plods through a series of images and videos accompanied by Gibbs’ monotone narration. I’m not going to get through this film in one sitting.

While I wait for my viewing stamina to return, let’s go to the actual beginning: Moore’s 1989 film Roger & Me. As a directorial debut, it holds up remarkably well, and introduces the first strand’s of Moore’s intricately woven cinematic web, the center of which is the director’s hometown of Flint, Michigan. Moore followed up Roger & Me with Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11, and film was never quite the same. Moore’s influence in the development of modern documentary techniques is, in my mind, inestimable.

Around the same time as Roger & Me there was a much quieter film: Tony Buba’s Lightning Over Braddock: A Rustbowl Fantasy. Despite being contemporary of Moore with just as much talent, Buba’s work has failed to reach the same audience, perhaps because where Moore makes sprightly, entertaining films, Buba’s work often consciously eschews entertainment value: for example, putting money towards local grassroots activism rather than paying for the rights of a famous song performed in Lightning Over Braddock (instead, the scene plays out silently). Both strategies can have their place, I think, but when I read about Moore’s involvement in Planet of the Humans, I can’t help but think of Tony Buba.

As I watch on, Planet of the Humans only becomes more unbearable. We’re now into some nonsensical bullshit where Gibbs has stopped trying to be Michael Moore and is trying to be Godfrey Reggio or something and is, once again, failing miserably. Somehow despite the sped-up footage it’s still just an intolerable slog. To add insult to injury, I now hear the strains of King Crimson’s “In The Court of the Crimson King”. Please, Gibbs, leave King Crimson out of this. Where some filmmakers, including documentarians, actually know how to use music to make a point (or in Buba’s case, not use music to make a point), Planet of the Humans sounds more like a readymade soundtrack. I’ll say what I said when Bohemian Rhapsody came out: save your money and listen to the album instead.

I’m not an environmental scientist, so I can’t comment on the film’s science except in my capacity to read and quote others (although even with only a rudimentary knowledge of climate science, the omissions should be obvious to any progressive who has even remotely been paying attention). I’ll leave the criticisms of the film’s climate and energy science to the climate and energy scientists. But I do understand film rhetoric, and this film is an utter mess. I’m not going to jump on the outrage bandwagon for political or environmental reasons; I’m just angry and disappointed Moore would lend his name to such a piece of incompetent filmmaking.

The film is cut in awkward, jarring places, as if the film is constantly losing its train of thought. Gibbs lacks the wit of Michael Moore, the poetry of Ron Fricke, and the nuance of Errol Morris, but at times it seems Gibbs wishes he was each one. Brian Kahn pointed out, “I feel like I didn’t watch three acts but three separate movies”, which is just about right, although for me those three movies felt all cobbled together. Gibbs is all over the place here, and that disconnect is often necessary to make his points, which is the sign of a weak argument and a filmmaker just going through the motions.

Yes, it’s clear Gibbs has a passion for what he’s detailing. That’s not what I mean by “going through the motions”. I mean that Jeff Gibbs seems, if this film can be any indication, to be a kind of filmmaking automaton who understands the literal processes but not what goes on underneath; the film is utterly, unbearably mechanical. In this way, what Planet of the More Human Than Humans reminds me of most is the Transformers movies: all mechanics and no soul. Like Transformers, Gibbs’ film is a vision of apocalyptic argle-bargle shrouded in bad editing.

Normally the release of a new film with which Michael Moore was involved would fill me with excitement, but it really does seem that this particular provocation is a toxic attack on not just the technologies that might help stop the climate apocalypse but on the people working to stop said apocalypse. Meanwhile, as Ketan Joshi points out, “the extreme oldness of this film stands out.” Sure, the film attacks Bill McKibben through dishonest cherry-picking, but it also attacks Greta Thunberg through sheer omission.

A clip from The Hill‘s Rising program, featuring Moore, Gibbs, and producer Ozzie Zehner, speaks to the intentions of Michael Moore, and helps square the film’s environmental conservatism with Moore’s history of progressive ideas. Moore says in the video, “the word ‘enough’ is the dirtiest word in capitalism.” This is true. Moore reiterates anti-capitalist ideas and criticizes the way environmentalism has mixed with big business. This is the nugget of truth to Planet of the Humans: we cannot tackle climate change until we dismantle capitalism.

The dynamic can be found all over the place: large companies driven by capitalist imperatives adopt mildly not-awful social policies to placate the mostly-privileged moderate liberals that they see as their market. In turn, those same moderate liberals can go about their lives and, yes, continue unfettered consumption. Michael Moore’s interview with The Hill is far more worth watching than the film he is being interviewed about; he delivers a cogent, tidy critique of the logics of capitalism.

The problem is that Jeff Gibbs and Ozzie Zehner did not make an anti-capitalist film. They made an anti-renewable-energy film. Or maybe they didn’t; the film is a jumble of ideas that don’t ultimately fit together in a way that creates anything close to a point. Instead, as Josh Fox said when he appeared to respond to Moore et al on Rising, “this film capitalizes on the fact that people don’t understand renewable energy and renewable energy literacy is very low.” That’s the core of the problem: it’s less a good-faith argument than a scare tactic. It doesn’t inform; it exploits ignorance. Fox even points out that modern climate activism largely agrees with Moore on anti-capitalism. Sadly, the film prefers to conjure straw enemies, particularly Bill McKibben (that creature of the wheel, that lord of the infernal engines), within environmentalism instead of recognizing common ground.

Ultimately I’m not actually sure that Moore even watched Planet of the Humans, so great is the disconnect between his interview (and his track record) and the film I watched. That makes me feel better in an incredibly selfish way; after all, he’s had a huge influence on my cinematic sensibilities and my politics. Because I agree with what Moore seems to think the film is about but disagree with what the film is actually about, I choose to believe that this unfortunate film is a failure — of rhetoric, of art, of science — and not, as would be far worse, a success in the eyes of Michael Moore.