“Fahrenheit 11/9,” which had its world premiere on Thursday night at the Toronto International Film Festival, was supposed to be Michael Moore’s new movie to bring down President Donald Trump.
But that’s the movie we thought Moore was making, not the movie he actually made.
The movie he made is bigger, messier, more sprawling and ultimately more rousing. It goes on long detours, changes course and leaves Trump offscreen for huge chunks of time, as it turns into something that is less an anti-Trump diatribe than a demand for action.
The heart of the movie, it turns out, isn’t Trump at all — it’s the mothers crusading for action in Flint, Michigan, the teachers successfully going on strike in West Virginia and, most of all, the students from Parkland, Florida who turned the mass shooting at their school into the start of a national movement.