Michael Moore (right) and Sgt. Abdul Henderson, on Capitol Hill, attempt to convince congressmen to send their sons to Iraq in Fahrenheit 9/11

In a Springdale, Ohio, multiplex theater, swing central for suburban Cincinnati voters in a key swing state for the 2004 Presidential elections, one of the largest Monday afternoon crowds I've ever witnessed watches director Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, a fast, furious and frequently funny polemic on the Bush administration and its case for the Iraqi War.

The diverse audience, young and old, black and white, laughs hardest when a smug President George W. Bush talks to a TV crew about the importance of hunting down terrorists, then stops the conversation to play golf. The scene that brings the largest gasps is one where Moore shows Bush reading My Pet Goat with a Florida elementary school class for seven minutes after being told that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center and America was under attack. The scene that generates tears, a rare thing for a Moore documentary, occurs when a Flint, Mich., woman laments the death of her son in Iraq and reads his last letter home, a letter lambasting the government that sent him there.

Whether the audience is swayed by Moore's accusations or saved, depending on your political allegiance, is difficult to say. What's undeniable is the audience's rapt attention throughout the film.

Fahrenheit 9/11 is enjoying the type of high-profile release normally reserved for Hollywood blockbusters. In fact, it beat out the Hollywood blockbusters to claim the top spot at the weekend box office.

Fahrenheit 9/11 earned an estimated $21.8 million from only 868 theaters. (Second place film White Chicks played in 2,726 theaters). The film opened in select New York City theaters Wednesday and so far has earned $22 million, eclipsing in less than a week the $21.6 million earned by Moore's 2002 release Bowling for Columbine. (Keep in mind: the 900-odd cinemas playing Fahrenheit 9/11 are three times more than the total number of theaters that screened Bowling.) Imagine: The crowds for Fahrenheit 9/11 are larger than the lines for former Democratic President Bill Clinton and autographed copies of his new memoir.

Mel Gibson's film, The Passion of the Christ, energized the right earlier in the year, and now liberals, the American left, are enjoying their time in the sun, thanks to Fahrenheit 9/11. In Moore's breakout film, liberals see the answer to their longstanding question: Who will be the liberal equivalent of conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly?

The two films might appear to be polar opposites at first glance, but here is how The Passion and Fahrenheit 9/11 are the same: intense enthusiasm for the film from certain circles; organized activist groups buying tickets to the film; and the idea that we are seeing something that corporate America wanted to stifle.

The Passion showed the Christ's crucifixion in graphic detail and harshly portrayed the role of the Jews in the death of Jesus.

Gibson has unprecedented clout and resources thanks to Passion profits. He is positioned to do whatever he wants, especially now that he has proven his ability to reach deep into middle-America audiences. Still, it's unclear what business deals studio executives, many of whom were not fans of the film, will make with Gibson.

Gibson's comments about the Holocaust and his refusal to distance himself from his father's anti-Semitic statements generated controversy.

In fact, controversy is the common ground that unites The Passion and Fahrenheit 9/11.

The Moore backlash includes the recently announced, anti-Michael Moore film festival, the American Film Renaissance. Ten films are planned for the Texas-based conservative film festival, including Michael Moore Hates America, an exposé of Moore's filmmaking methods. The book, Michael Moore is a Big Fat Stupid White Male, an anti-Moore rant by David Hardy and Jason Clarke, hits bookstores shortly.

Moore has hired a "rebuttal team" of fact checkers and advisers to respond to accusations of lies in the film. What's worth noting is that his accusers are likely some of the same conservatives who rallied around The Passion.

Conservative groups like Move America Forward have called on members to ask theater owners not to show the film. (They are the same group who persuaded CBS not to show the recent TV drama on Ronald Reagan.)

Meanwhile, liberal Internet marketing and activist groups like MoveOn.org are rallying around the film, but Moore's best friend is the almighty dollar. With money on his side -- serious money thanks to Fahrenheit 9/11's No. 1 ranking -- few exhibitors, if any, will be persuaded to drop the film from their theaters.

This serious box office take leads to an even more scintillating conclusion. Some of the same people who lined up earlier this year for The Passion likely joined the weekend crowds to watch Fahrenheit 9/11. Did they come out of sheer curiosity to see Moore's anti-Bush rant for themselves? Did they end up liking what they watched? Did they leave swayed by Moore's arguments? Will they watch Fahrenheit 9/11 a second time, the true test of any movie phenomenon?

Political pundits point at a United States map checkered with red and blue states indicating their political majorities and proclaim that the country is split evenly down the middle. Critics are also divided on Fahrenheit 9/11. Granted, most find Moore's anti-Iraq War message absorbing, but they also take issue with what Salon's Stephanie Zacharek calls "cheap shot, inference and sloppy reporting."

The New York Times critic A.O. Scott sums up Fahrenheit 9/11 like this: "The film is many things: a partisan rallying cry, an angry polemic, a muckraking inquisition into the use and abuse of power. But one thing it is not is a fair and nuanced picture of the president and his policies."

In last week's CityBeat, critic Steve Rosen wrote: "Witheringly indignant not only about George W. Bush's rationale for the Iraq war but also about his very qualifications and intelligence to serve as president, Fahrenheit 9/11 is provocative and -- strange as this may seem, given the subject matter -- entertaining."

Still, audiences and critics agree on one thing: Fahrenheit 9/11 is impossible to ignore. It was just six weeks ago that Moore accused Disney of censoring him by its refusal to allow Miramax Films to release the film. Making the most of the Cannes Film Festival spotlight, Moore hinted at the chance that Fahrenheit 9/11 would not be released in the United States. The momentum flipped to his favor after the Cannes Jury awarded Fahrenheit 9/11 the Palme d'Or. Miramax Films sold U.S. theatrical rights to IFC Films and Lions Gate Films.

Just a few weeks ago, Moore said he was being silenced. Now he has the nation's top film at the box office, which puts him atop the tallest soapbox in the country.

It's difficult to imagine America before The Passion became a phenomenon. Its hold on the public psyche was that deep and far reaching. It's also impossible to consider current American politics without mentioning Fahrenheit 9/11. It too has become part of the national conversation, something all people are aware of, whether or not they've watched the film.

Politics and popular culture continue to overlap in this election year with a number of documentary films making headlines.

First-time filmmaker and cinematic martyr Morgan Spurlock has appeared on network TV news shows in defense of his funny first-person documentary, Super Size Me. For his on-camera experiment, Spurlock eats exclusively at McDonald's restaurants for 30 days straight, three meals a day. Super Size Me is a personal story; Spurlock's total immersion into fast food, but one that has generated public outcry directed at McDonald's. Recently, McDonald's announced the elimination of its Super Size menu, proof that film can make a real world impact.

Sharing Fahrenheit 9/11's sociopolitical spirit, filmmaker Jehane Noujaim's engrossing, timely, Iraqi War documentary, Control Room, provides an unbiased look at Al Jazeera, the most popular news channel in the Arab world, broadcasting news of the Iraqi war to 40 million Arabs.

The same critics who accuse Moore of being one-sided also deride Al Jazeera as, at minimum, displaying a pro-Iraqi bias in its reporting and, at its worst, functioning as a mouthpiece for Osama Bin Laden.

Noujaim uses matter-of-fact digital video camerawork and interviews with Al Jazeera staff, U.S. military personnel and U.S. journalists to balance the Western perception of Al Jazeera with an insider's look, the Arab perspective of the Iraqi War. As a result, like Al Jazeera, Noujaim has also been accused of being biased and one-sided.

In a country divided over the Iraqi War, it's easy to see how Noujaim's attempt to tell a fair portrayal of Al Jazeera would quickly generate critics. The long-term hope, the goal for all documentary filmmakers, whether emerging artists like Noujaim and Spurlock or veterans like Moore, is to create a film that unites opposing groups. A compelling, well told story could be a common ground for people.

In the money-go-round, Passion earned $608 million worldwide, meaning Moore has a lot of work ahead of him if he wants his film to be bigger than The Passion. Prognosticators are already predicting Fahrenheit 9/11 as a candidate for Best Picture Oscar, the same prediction offered up for The Passion of the Christ.

In Moore's next film he will strive to see how many people he can save in 90 minutes by intervening with a camera crew to embarrass health insurance companies and hospitals into continuing to care for patients.

Leading man, now leading mogul Gibson and Moore share one thing in common: Both know what it's like to be loved and loathed at the same time. ©