Review of Roger & Me (1989) by Ann D — 30 Oct 2013

Credibility in a documentary requires a viewer's trust and belief in the accuracy of what is being argued or portrayed. Without credibility, a documentary's message loses weight and importance. Even though these films are by no means a complete representation of reality, it's a director's responsibility to display integrity by correctly depicting an event's chronology and not over-manipulating the film's audience. Michael Moore's Roger & Me lacks this valuable quality of credibility as he manipulates the audience by juxtaposing shots, tampering with the chronology of the film, and exploiting the figure expression and movements of the subjects of his many interviews.

In a participatory mode of documentary, the film documents the 1980s General Motors plant shutdowns in Flint, Michigan, which resulted in 30,000 lost jobs. Moore depicts the transformation of Flint, Michigan from a blue-collar, hard-working community into a crime filled, unemployment-ridden city. The overhanging purpose of the film is for Moore to meet with and convince the chairman of General Motors, Roger Smith, to spend a day in Flint; Moore wants Smith to see what effect the plant shutdowns have had. When Moore's direction isn't focused on his hopeless search for the chairman, he attempts to show the growing divide between the wealthy and poor in Flint. The director utilizes interviews, observation, and archival shots to tell the narrative. Moore plays a main role as he narrates the film, while also appearing in many of the interview shots.

As a director, Moore uses parallel editing to manipulate the viewer, emphasizing the differences between General Motors and the company's former employees. While Smith gives a speech at the GM Christmas party, Moore intercuts scenes of a family in Flint being evicted from their house on Christmas Eve. Smith's speech has no real substance and is full of clichés about the spirit of Christmas starkly contrasting Moore's intercutting images of an evicted Flint family taking down their Christmas tree. The impactful editing shows the sad reality against GM's manipulated version of events. Smith and GM depict the holiday season as a "total experience"; for example, "the lights remind us of the warmth of human companionship and of the Spring that's never far behind. We listen for the jingle bells in the country. We smell the pine needles on the trees." During this dialogue, Moore artfully cuts to the evicted family moving out of the house with a shot of a man carrying the Christmas tree out to the sidewalk from the living room. Smith's definition of Christmas does not extend to the people of Flint, especially the unemployed greatly hurt by the plant shutdowns. By parallel editing the dialogue of Smith's speech with the scene of an evicted family moving out of their home tells a strong narrative of disconnect between the executives of GM and their low-level employees being laid off.

Roger & Me utilizes figure expression and movement to draw sympathy for the blue-collar workers of Flint who lost jobs from GM. In many interviews with these now jobless employees, these individual's body language and facial expressions augment the narrative's strong and depressing nature. It is his aggressive and arrogant interviews with people who deny him access to Roger Smith, however, where Moore's filming tactics undermine the message in the film. When GM closed down the plant famous for the 1936 Flint Sit-Down Strike, Moore attempts to interview the spokesperson of the shutdown, Mrs. McGee. However, she doesn't comply with Moore's interview requests and asks him to leave the private premises. She cites Moore as a private interest and an independent filmmaker as reasons. The director throws a fit, claiming he has rights to be on the property because he is a citizen of Flint, "We happen to be citizens of this community here; that's not a private interest." Moore is obviously trying to gain sympathy for Flint's plight by showing the unwillingness of a GM spokesperson to conduct an interview with him; instead, the director's stubborn and self-righteous attitude only serves to undermine his intended message.

Director Moore attempts to portray a world with distinct lines separating rich and poor social classes. Moore uses Flint as a prime example of this class divide by interviewing only the wealthy at several stereotypically high cultured events: a round of golf, a country club party, and Jailhouse Rock Party where the wealthy distastefully spend the night in a new prison soon to be opened. The wealthy describe Flint as a wonderful place to live beaming with opportunity. Moore juxtaposes these interviews with shots of the hardest hit plant shutdown areas in Flint. Moore's editing of the shots displays a strong sympathy for the poor and strong disdain for the rich.

The lack of chronology in Roger & Me further hampers the quality and credibility of the film. Despite filming over a two-year span, from 1987 to 1989, Moore uses archival footage of Flint with images and stories of the construction, opening, and closing of the Hyatt, the Water Street Pavilion, and AutoWorld. Moore edits the footage of these events together, failing to mention each event's time and date, thus portraying Flint as an incompetent city. He shows footage of the three major openings as if they occurred consecutively and within a short period of time. By manipulating the timeline of events, Moore drastically changes the narrative in an attempt to gather more empathy for his message and cause. Instead of a non-biased documentary open to interpretation, Roger & Me tries to shape, rather than facilitate, the audience's views of Flint's dire situation. As Carley Cohan and Gary Crowdus note in their article on the film, "Reflections on Roger & Me, Michael Moore, and His Critics", the events depicted in the film "sparked a controversy over Moore's allegedly 'unethical' documentary techniques." The authors cite Harlan Jacobson's interview with Moore, where " the charges of deliberately deceptive filmmaking methods [were] leveled against Moore by Harlan Jacobson." Even though Cohan and Crowdus proceed to declare Jacobson's charges as overstated, Moore's deceptive techniques leave an impression on the viewer.

A large portion of the film is Moore's attempt to meet with Roger Smith and convince him to spend a day in Flint to truly see the effect of the plant shutdowns. This endeavor is largely in vain; as an independent filmmaker, Moore comes across as arrogant expecting to so easily meet with the Chairman of a major corporation. While Moore's efforts may initially be seen as ambitious and bold, his venture comes off as highly egotistical. After consistently failing to meet with, Moore takes another pompous route by trying to acquire sympathy for Flint through biased filming and editing techniques. Moore's lack of credibility serves to harm the integrity of the documentary and forces the viewer to question the film's accuracy.