Roger & Me (Moore, 1989)

Michael Moore's first film, Roger & Me (1989) clearly sets a precedent for his later work. Moore uses his own voice as a narration, and even interacts with people on-screen which has become his style of filmmaking over the last 20 years. His artful misrepresentation of facts in order to tell a more compelling story is also as dominant in Roger as it is in his subsequent films.

Whether he 'tells the truth' or not, he is extremely successful in this film. He set out to show anyone that would listen that Roger Smith, then chairman and CEO of General Motors, had chosen to close down all of GM's factories in Flint, Michigan where it all started and was unwilling to talk to acknowledge the devastation this created there. Roger & Me does that job.

Whether you take Moore's representation of the facts and chronology of the situation at face-value, or you dig deep to find that he does in fact misrepresent some of those facts, you still walk away from the film with a feeling that large corporations are bad for small towns. It does not hurt the film in the least that it also happens to be rather entertaining and enjoyable.

Moore's blurring of the line between educational and entertainment is well done. He is inviting you to dig deeper and seek out is fact-bending anachronisms, and in that way is getting the viewer to learn more about the issue plaguing his home town. It is a little deceiving to make the less critical viewers believe that what you are giving them is the truth, but I do not see anywhere in the film where he says that this is the whole truth.