No matter how much I'm looking forward to seeing a movie, I generally avoid seeing it on opening weekend to steer clear of crowds and lines. I made a bit of an exception yesterday afternoon, and went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 up in Evanston - I wanted to see if it really was up to all its advance hoopla, negative and positive.

The evening showings were sold out, but we managed to get a pair of tickets for a 1:50pm showing - fortunately we showed up almost an hour in advance because the line was huge: oddly, it was like a little flash of Burlington, Vermont. People of all ages (no kids, however) in polo shirts, tank tops, college tees, shorts, sandals, shirts with designs reading "Bush: Operation Enduring Stupidity" and "Dean for America," etc. Not too many signs of Kerry's campaign around, except for one guy selling buttons and bumperstickers outside.

It seemed more of an "anybody but Bush" crowd than a Kerry crowd, but a pervasive excitement was there - everyone talking about their advance impressions of the film, their political viewpoints and opposition of the Iraq war made it seem like more of a political rally than a movie experience. The buzz was like a real-life Lord of the Rings and Star Wars rolled into one, except there was no clearly-defined "good guy" - just a bunch of Orcs using the Dark Side of the Force and their allies, and most everyone else.

How was the movie? Powerful and masterfully executed to make its desired impression; like an expert speaker and storyteller, Moore orchestrates the film as an uneasy rollercoaster dance between horror and laughs, so that just as you're loosened up with a comedic interlude, the action does a 180° and crashes you into a stunning stomach-drop. Fahrenheit 9/11 is very hard to watch at times, especially with its unflinching images of both American and Iraqi war casualties.

An especially strong sequence is Moore's montage of the events of 9/11: it starts cleverly in radio-style, the screen fading to black, and all the "blinded" audience hears is raw news footage audio of the dreadful whine and sickening crash of the jets striking the twin towers twice, then the sound of the crash in Washington, and the sounds and screams of ground-level panic in Manhattan. Then, as visuals return, absent any shots of the towers or the planes...we only see the numb, stricken faces of eyewitnesses helpless as the the unbelievable happens before their eyes. I have to say it's the most wrenching depiction of the attacks I've seen put together.

To be clear, Fahrenheit 9/11 is definitely not spinfree: it has an agenda, and there are several moments where I thought to myself, "well, correlation does not equal causation..." but the moments where George Bush makes the biggest monkey of himself require absolutely no clever editing or effecting. Sadly, these unfortunate soundbites and bits of video that ended up on the White House press room's cutting room floor, so to speak, really speak for themselves.

What I find most interesting about this film is that it is not only an "media event" but a unique experiment in wag-the-dog political moviemaking, timed fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view) proximate to the 2004 election season. How will this film affect the elections? It didn't change my mind (I wasn't planning on voting for Bush before, as you can surely guess), and judging from the audience I saw, quite likely it's preaching to the converted.

But one person I know well, a conservative, staunch Bush supporter, also saw the movie yesterday in another part of the country and came away changed by it. She said didn't know who she was going to vote for in November.

"There's no way [Bush] can be re-elected after this," she said. That's only one person's opinion, but only time will tell.

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