No contemporary documentary director has as recognizable a formula as Michael Moore. Pick an issue, find a few sympathetic folks to tell tear jerking stories related to said issue; pick a boogeyman to shoulder the blame for the subject's tears, and then hunt down that boogeyman and force him (I *think* it's always been a him) to confront his own culpability. That's the ultimate moment of a Michael Moore film, right? The part where the populist warrior confronts his ideological enemy (or, at the very least, a symbol of his ideological enemy) and either reduces him to a simpering idiot, or gets the camera crew forcibly ejected from the building?
At first, Sicko comes off as the ultimate distillation of the Michael Moore formula. At times the filmmaker even seems to be pushing his "regular dude" persona into the territory of self-parody. The New York Times' A.O. Scott notes the "theatrical faux-naïveté" which Moore applies to his investigation of French, Canadian, and British healthcare; this tactic reaches its apotheosis when Moore has himself shot approaching the Eiffel Tower with a dazed, gee-whiz look on his face. Didn't get a chance to visit Paris on all those trips to Cannes, huh MIke?
But then something interesting happens: the movie ends before Moore can directly confront his boogeyman. There seems to have been a conscious decision on the part of the filmmaker to avoid conflict. Sure, he takes a few sick 9/11 rescue workers (it's debatable how many: there are sweeping, 35mm shots of three boats full of sick people leaving Miami, but only four subjects are shown in later scenes) to Cuba, with the stated goal of getting for "our heroes" the free health care bestowed on "Al Qaeda" at Gitmo, but the gang never makes it to the detention center. In Sicko, Moore and his sick friends get to Cuba, look at their target from afar ... and then walk away. Instead of attempting to follow through with the ostensible point of the stunt, Moore leads the rescue workers to Havana Hospital, where they seek (and obtain) full, no-cost medical care.
Whether or not Michael Moore ever actually interviewed Roger Smith, the fact that he showed up at (and got kicked out of) GM Headquarters was a political action. In Sicko, Moore sets up stunts but then refuses to follow through. In the final scene, after learning that the French government provides new mothers with what amounts to free in-home maid service, there's a shot of Moore heading up the steps of the U.S. Capital with a laundry basket tucked under his arm. The old Michael Moore would have marched straight up to the first Congressman he encountered and handed him the basket. The new Michael Moore cuts, Sopranos-style, to the closing credits. But unlike David Chase's cut heard round the world, no one will spend weeks dissecting this editing decision--it's clear that Moore, once our most dependable provocateur, is now content to settle for the easy joke.
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