Bechdel Test Movie List

It's a documentary with Michael Moore as the interviewer. Due to the format almost all interaction is between him and one other subject. Women are represented in interviews and selected clips, and include political figures as well as "slice of life" interviewees. Substantially more screen time goes to men but the representation of women is better than average.

Considering this is a documentary, I don't really think it should be included in this list seeing as the rest of the films could control what gender the stars are. Michael Moore cannot control the genders of those who are experts in economics, law, and religion, traditionally male-dominated fields.

There is a wide range of possible experts, and there are many experts in economics, law and religion who are female. Moore had a choice.

There's no way a documentary like this would pass the bechdel test even if it had equal screen time for women and men, simply because of the nature of the way it was filmed.

The format doesn't really allow for conversation without Michael Moore, so it's unfair to discount this movie as there is such a positive female role model in it. The only congress person/senator who had the guts to stand up to the bail out was a woman, awesome to see.

Well, there are many documentaries were two or more interviewees talk to each other, when interviewed at the same time.

There were several onscreen dialogues between two named men (two men other than Michael Moore) but none between women. Though a lot of the interaction is between him and one other person, there were conversations other than that, but only between men. Otherwise I would have agreed that the way it was filmed would make it difficult to pass the Bechdel test. Since men did have conversations with each other even in this format and women did not, I thought it was fair to include it.

@Mary: I first tried to rationalize the Bechdel test fail the same way, by the format of the movie. I think I gave the wrong impression in my first comment about the format. But the format did allow for conversations without Michael Moore: in fact there were many short conversations without him. However they were all only between men. There were no conversations between women. I agree that the interview with Elizabeth Warren was a highlight of the film, which I enjoyed.

@Quouar: Moore did interview female experts. But thanks for letting me know that it was impossible.

@Laurel: I feel that if Moore went out of his way to find female professionals in given fields for his documentary, rather than finding ones that either a) agreed with his stance or b)were more readily available, that's also sexist. I doubt he sought men, but rather the professionals most easily found happened to be male.

The rating already stands because there were conversations between men that weren't Michael Moore. But added to that, even if there weren't, the fact that Michael Moore is a star documentary maker is not unrelated to the fact that he's male. I've seen heaps of movies where the director is in the documentary. Hardly any of them are women directors.