I’m on the subway now, heading back home just a little after midnight. I just got out from seeing a special press screening of Michael Moore’s movie at the Roppongi Hills cinema complex. That’s the event that I’ve been hinting about for the past week or so, one that’s been in the works a while at Democrats Abroad Japan. After attending the Democratic caucus earlier this year, I paid more attention to the DAJ, getting on the mailing list and sometimes contributing to the blog. That’s how I found out that they were sponsoring a special press screening of the film tonight.

The film was more than I thought it was going to be. I had expected really not much more than a funny, biting polemic with a point of view, and certainly it was that. But it was more than I’d expected. Though I’d heard people talk about the film’s emotional impact, I wasn’t ready for what hit me. Yes, there are a lot of funny, sometimes hilarious bits with Bush and his staff, along with a variety of other politicians from both parties. There is irony and juxtaposition and a few good laughs. There are moments when you just roll your eyes or shake your head in exasperation at the outrageousness of what’s being laid out in front of you.

But this film, while funny, biting, and full of information, has an intensely stirring force to it, a jolt to the system that can be as hard to take as it is intensely necessary to receive. There is a great deal about this film that deals with the high and mighty, the forces and nations, the numbers and statistics, but where Moore is most effective is at the individual level, where you see the impact that the past four years has had on the lives of so many. Moore knows that to express the pain and devastation of so many people, it’s best to focus on one individual and see the full force of trauma on that person, at a level you can understand and empathize with. And then you realize that you have to amplify that feeling a thousand times and more, and then you get close to understanding what has been happening here.

Reading about all those people who had seen the film before as it opened in other countries, I’d heard of the standing ovations the film had gotten. And here we had this one viewing, filled with members and associates of Democrats Abroad. But this was no war-whooping crowd, and there was no standing ovation at the end. And it didn’t seem strange. Not because the film was not appreciated–it was, more than you could know from reading this. And maybe it was not even because the film ended just shy of midnight, after a full work day on the hottest, most oppressive day of the year so far. It was partially because this particular crowd was so jaded, so familiar with the territory–and it had just been presented to us in a new way, one that made the entire thing so much more human, so much more frightening and so much more real. It was not a moment where anyone felt like cheering, it was a sobering feeling, like waking up even more. We weren’t a crowd of film enthusiasts cheering the art, and we weren’t a bunch of rabble rousers cheering a hatchet job. We were a group of serious people who just got the emotional wind knocked out of us, and felt more than ever the motivation to fight this fight, to change this unreal reality.

More later. I’m going to have to review the film’s content more, explain a lot about what I’ve seen. More tomorrow, it’s late.

But not too late.