Films > Film Reviews

Where To Invade Next

13/06/16

Michael Moore’s new documentary is not, as the title suggests, an insight into the USA’s foreign policy. Instead we’re treated to a rare two hours of unadulterated optimism: America is screwed, but here’s what might eventually save it. Moore travels to the more progressive countries of Europe armed with a stars & stripes flag which he drapes over his shoulders like a caped colonist, and ‘steals’ their best ideas. And though the word is never explicitly mentioned, socialism is on the agenda. His previous films expose and berate the capitalist system, but here his solution is to switch from ‘me’ to ‘we’, from selfishness to selflessness.

Where to Invade Next’s winning ingredient is Moore’s usual light-hearted approach to these issues – somehow it feels more like a comedy than his other films. His expression of disbelief when receiving a free gun at a bank in Bowling For Columbine is nothing compared to, say, the faces of Finnish teachers upon discovering that poetry has been cut from the American high school syllabus, or an Italian couple being told that the average job in the USA provides zero paid vacation weeks (as opposed to the Italians’ eight +). Their incredulity is the entertainment. He ‘invades’ a French primary school and sits down to a four course lunch with the children, and when he shows them photos of Sloppy Joe’s and non-descript meat sauce their faces wrinkle up in disgust – ce n’est pas sain!

The film never looks at a single country as a whole, weighing up its pros and cons, it simply cherrypicks the best ideas. ‘Picking the flowers, not the weeds’ is what he calls it: by focusing on the better parts of these individual countries he has provided a set of answers to the crisis of America, a collage of humanity at its best. But ‘the UK as well,’ Moore says in the post-screening Q+A (via a live feed from Sheffield Doc/Fest); our government’s austerity cuts and demonisation of the poor paint a similar picture to America and he wants us to learn as much from the film as his own country should.

Where to Invade Next is a socialist manifesto, a list of ways to improve on education, child welfare, gender equality and employer/employee pay gaps; because if we’re all out for ourselves, who’s going to look after those that get left behind?

8/10