Where to Invade Next (2015)

Michael Moore's newest film, Where to Invade Next, is an optimistic piece of work. Turning his eye to how other countries have addressed social questions including education, political change, community health, the balance of work and play, and dealing with past complicity in oppression, the result is genuinely inspirational. Moore's trademark satire exposing abuses of power has been tempered with optimism and a spirit of invitation to his opponents. His theory is simple: healthy societies learn to base themselves on "we," not "me." Social welfare programs in such places are not seen as government intrusion or undermining personal responsibility. They are instead the result of a public agreement that because we all sometimes need help, and some more than others, we each share responsibility for a strong safety net. Where to Invade Next invites the recognition that the kind of solutions embraced in Iceland (where leadership by women is championed), France (where school lunches respect children's health and enjoyment), and Germany (where the story of the Holocaust is taught as a memorial, a warning, and an apology) are rooted in the common good. It's appropriate for Moore to take a less condemnatory tone toward those who disagree with him: for his goal is a society in which those opponents see themselves as being on the same team as him. 

Challenging his harshest critics, he stresses his love of country, and of the idea of building a society in which we discover friendship to be more profitable than individualism. But he also suggests that the solutions presented in this film already have a US American track record. The emergence of unions, contemporary notions of democracy, and the feminist movement, just to name three, all have important roots in US history. Moore thinks that progress is a matter of the US doing what it has already done well before. But alongside the optimism and the inspiration, Where to Invade Next is missing concrete proposals for how this could be achieved. Moore began his activism in Flint, MI, and continues to work for the good of that city—and the future of transformative politics is likely to be just as local. Making his movie available to watch at home anywhere and connecting it to social movements that already exist would make much more of the opportunity of such a lovely film. He might take a lead from the sage comedian Louie CK, who has made his smart and moving new show Horace and Pete available directly from his website. The "we" that Moore wants to help initiate could still be born at the movies, if he brought the movie to them, rather than asking them to come to it.