Fahrenheit 9/11 is easily Michael Moore's best film, not only because it's the most urgent but also because it has the most elegant form, a complete arc that begins with the decision makers and concludes with the people in the trenches, two poles that are given roughly equal time and feel half a world apart, in every way.

The decision making end, of course, centers around President Bush, and while Moore has a few new details that haven't appeared on the front pages of the major newspapers, most of the movie's impact isn't in the pieces of data that it presents but in how it connects them. Or, rather, how it disconnects them, since one of the central themes of the movie hinges on a simple, irrefutable fact: most of the people doing the fighting in our military are from lower classes and most of the people making the decisions to send troops into battle aren't, a point that Moore makes by first going to his home town of Flint, Michigan, where it's easy to find people who have relatives in the military, then by trying to confront members of Congress, only one of whom has a child in Iraq. In this movie, his trademark ambush tactics feel less like attention grabbing stunts and more like comic illustrations that hang on the outside of a sturdier and far more somber trunk.

Moore's treatment of the September 11th attack in the movie's opening minutes is apolitical and incredibly moving, even now, after every screen and page in the country has shown some version of the event and we've been reflecting on it for over two years. The sequence is more effective, more cinematic, than anything he's ever done, topped only by his later discussion with Lila Lipscomb, a woman whose family has a long record of service in the military, including Iraq. She's articulate and emotional, and she seems to make Moore's points so well that one wonders where he found her. Actually, he says where: she's from Flint.

Part of what's effective about her story is that it's not an argument. It's a woman, a person, a family, caught in the middle and trying to make sense of everything. She's not a prop or a puppet, and it's hard to imagine someone — conservative or liberal — not being moved by her situation and her words. Moore's interview is unlike those he's done in the past; he's rarely seen or heard when she's talking. He lets her go on at length describing the difficulty of living a life connected to the military and reading a letter from her son in a sequence that left the full theater where I saw the movie sniffling and silent. War is sadness and pain, this war, every war, whether you agree that Bush is at fault or not.

There are moments, however, when Moore is also trying to tell us something about himself. While talking to Lipscomb, he makes sure to say that this is a great country, which breaks the flow somewhat because it sounds like a personal defense against his critics, one that he shouldn't have to make, of course, but in these times who can blame him for reminding us, even awkwardly. But later, when Lipscomb walks the mall in Washington to get a glimpse of the White House, he shows uncharacteristic restraint. His camera follows her as she strolls, which provokes an unknown woman to intervene, move in front of the camera, and announce that the whole thing is staged. In earlier movies, it would be hard to imagine him hanging back at this moment, but in this one he lets the two women settle it, stepping in audibly only once to ask Lipscomb to clarify something that the microphone wasn't able to pick up.

Unfortunately, those who are unsympathetic to Moore's cause may be so turned off by the first half of the movie that even the last half, which should be of interest to anyone whose votes or tax dollars are supporting a war, may instead seem like manipulation, typical tear-jerking tricks of the bleeding hearts on the left, after the low blows and cheap shots, the goofy music, the silly superimposing of the administration's heads onto cowboy bodies, and the unflattering, out-of-context footage of Bush. Further, it may seem exploitative of a woman in pain, although a premise of the movie is that this is exactly the sort of thing the elites don't get to see up close, so here's their chance. Critics may also note that for all the names that Moore throws out attempting to connect Bush to oil cartels, he actually draws very few lines between those names and fails to build anything more than a hazy, oil-drenched picture.

I suppose this is the problem with Michael Moore. He's so polarizing, and so notoriously loose with the facts, that the legitimate questions he raises are often lost in the noise. And this movie has as much noise as any of his others. Every lucid observation is nestled in a bed of crackpot fragments. Nevertheless, despite the lack of clarity in parts of his argument, isn't it at least unseemly for so many of the key players in this game to be oil company executives, defense contractors, and financial partners of the ruling family? Isn't it at least worrying that our supposedly merit-based society, which prides itself on a system that connects actions to rewards and penalties, allows such distance between the have-nots who are doing the dirty work and the aristocracy that directs them? And isn't it a bit broad to say that someone like Moore is un-American for criticizing the government in a time of war, especially since the president has said the end of that war should come only after the elimination of something that has existed for nearly all of recorded history?

It doesn't take an acute social or political sense to make these observations, but it's helpful to see them compressed, even amid static, into a concentrated reflection on recent U.S. military action that's far less vindictive than emotional, and worthy of — demanding — a response.