Following two separate plots, ROGER & ME weaves the story of the life of its author, Flint, Michigan native Michael Moore, with the plight of his beloved home. When General Motors, at the time the wealthiest corporation in the world, closes factories to open more profitable ones in Mexico, Flint goes from model American everytown to the place MONEY magazine called “the worst place to live in America.” Rightfully angry at this mistreatment, some Flint residents hold a rally where they burn some copies of MONEY, rationally explaining that there are worse places in America; after all, Flint has its own PGA Tour event and a decent-sized air show.

Moore, watching his beloved hometown fall to pieces, takes up the task of finding GM CEO Roger B. Smith and bringing him to view the damage his well-intentioned corporation has caused. Moore, with a factory worker’s wardrobe and mullet, seems an unlikely hero, but his voiceover is so likeable, and his intentions so noble, that his message is difficult to disagree with, even for those politically inclined to do so.

The film’s quest introduces us to an eccentric and fascinating cast of characters; as the old adage goes, real life is always stranger than fiction. One Flint resident has taken to selling rabbits for extra cash. The sign on her lawn reads “Rabbits…Bunnies…Pets or Meat” and as the film gruesomely shows, she is very good at what she does. Another resident sells Amway products from her home, “analyzing the color” of women in order to instruct them as to how to properly dress, only to discover that she herself has been living a lie; she’s a “spring” not a “fall.” Some people who have sold a little too much of their blood for money instruct Moore that the blood bank is open, “Mondays…and Tuesdays, and Wednesday, Thursday, Friday...but not Saturdays and...Sundays.”

Through incredible use of visual and audio juxtaposition, Moore’s documentary is devastating, humorous, and sometimes both at the same time. One auto worker who lost his job is now in a mental institution. A friend of Moore’s, he explains that when he finally snapped, he dashed out of the plant and drove off for home. He turned on the radio, but the song he found was THE BEACH BOYS’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice?,” about the cruelest joke the DJ of radio fate could have played on the poor guy. Moore, along with his editors Jennifer Beman and Wendey Stanzler, fade up the classic BEACH BOYS track while panning across acre after acre of abandoned homes and boarded up shops. It’s cruel, but brutally effective.

Moore’s style is to let people talk, but in ways which make the poor look honest and hardworking while the rich condemn themselves with their own heartless words (one wealthy woman playing golf derides those laid-off auto workers for being too lazy to get out and work). He doesn’t play fair, but he doesn’t pretend to play fair. Obviously the film is against GM, but in a subtle way, it is against Flint too. If this town hadn’t so completely given itself over to a company to find an identity -- it’s nickname is “Buick City” -- it would never have been so dangerously dependent on it. Watching this film recently for the first time in several years, I was moved by small visions of hope amongst endless despair, and by the job of Fred Ross, who has the unenviable task of evicting people from their homes when they don’t pay rent, sometimes as much as 24 evictions in one day. A decent guy doing the best he can, his opinions are occasionally muddled, but always fascinating, and he probably gets more screen time to speak his mind than anyone other than Moore. In a quiet scene in which he evicts a high school classmate of Moore’s (whose parents thoughtlessly named him James Bond), Ross reveals he too worked for GM, but quit because the factory was “a prison.”

There could be no happy ending to this story, and Moore doesn’t force one, though the Beach Boys tune that provides the film with one of its most powerful moments returns to reinforce his final thoughts. Moore went on to become one of the nation’s most outspoken liberals and one of the most famous liberal filmmakers in the world (His latest, BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, about guns in America, opens in New York on Friday). His left wing views have gotten even more extreme in recent years and as a fan of his films I still find myself put off by some of his more outlandish speeches. But there is no denying the power of this first film; simple, small, personal, and completely enthralling.