Arizona Reporter - Movie Reviews - 23/09
CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY
Overture Films
Reviewed for Arizona Reporter by Harvey Karten
Grade: B+
Directed & Written by: Michael Moore
Cast: Michael Moore, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Henry Paulson, Alan Greenspan, many others
Screened at: AMC 34th Street, NYC, 9/21/09
Opens: September 23, 2009 (limited); October 2 (wider)
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Moore, at 54 this country’s most successful documentary film maker, has not found favor with the American health system (“Sicko”), automobile execs (“Roger and Me”), America’s penchant for unnecessary wars (“Fahrenheit 9/11”, “Canadian Bacon”), the gun lobby (“Bowling for Columbine”), and the practice of laying off workers despite record profits (“The Big One”). Now with his latest entry into one-sided documentary filmmaking, the ironically titled “Capitalism: A Love Story,” he illustrates his disgust for the ways that Big Money’s corruption has punished millions of workers who have spent their lives playing by the rules.
In his NY Times column September 21, Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman states that “It’s time for the president to realize that sometimes populism, especially populism that makes bankers angry, is exactly what the economy needs.” Michael Moore could not agree more. What’s more, Moore expresses himself, through this absolutely riveting, laugh-out-loud movie, in ways that are a lot more humorous than (with due respect) Mr. Krugman’s column.
People who go to Michael Moore films do not necessarily agree with everything he comes up with. But even those who hate the guy’s ideology stream to the multiplexes not necessarily because he has the best ideas, but because he is hands down the most entertaining documentarian alive today. Forget talking heads, the bane of this genre of film. Forget the boredom of balanced documentaries. While recent films like “Crude,” about the pollution of Ecuador’s rain forests by the Chevron corporation, are enlightening with more arguments favoring the left than business interests, they are sometimes difficult to sit through. Moore never has that problem.
This time around, his look into the recent meltdown of the American economy throws off a tightly-formatted common to “Bowling for Columbine” in favor of jumping from one story to another in a seemingly random way—which to me is one of the negative points of “Capitalism.” Furthermore, I’m not at all sure the audience, or at least those without Ph.D’s in Economics like Paul Krugman, will gain much intellectual understanding of the causes of the near-Depression that the U.S. has so far avoided even if ten percent of the work force is now considered unemployed. We—or should I say I—still do not understand “derivatives,” whose malfunction seemed to be the big cause of this recession, nor am I knowledgeable about “credit swaps.” But Moore does not consider this a priority. He wants us to say “I’m mad as hell and I’m not taking it anymore,” to band together with our fellows to demand that politicians get off their duffs to make real changes, not the change that President Obama hectored us with during his campaign. Moore himself states this paradox at the conclusion of his 126-minute doc, “I refuse to live in a country like this, and I’m not leaving.”
How does he get us in the audience mad as hell? He does this by pointing out incidents that support the idea that it’s not really the politicians or the corporate leaders who are to blame, but the capitalist system itself. In at least one incident, that of a robotics company that is owned by the workers in which its CEO gets no more pay than any worker nor is his vote more important than that of a prole, the company is making money without laying off any of its employees.
Here are other ways he demonstrates the failure of the capitalism, one which he believes is “free market” only if you’re rich, or someone in the top one percent of the population (which controls more wealth than the bottom ninety-five percent).
Item: A “bottom feeding” real estate company goes out of its way to locate housing that is foreclosed, buys it up at a bargain, and resells to those who have more money than the families thrown out on the street or having to live in the backs of their trucks;
Item: General Motors and the U.S. auto corporations made big bucks because we (the U.S.) bombed out their competitors in Germany, Japan and Italy;
Item: An auto executive states flat-out that if the company can be saved by laying off 10%, 30%, or 100% of its workforce, he would have no problem swinging the ax;
Item: Flint, Michigan, the town in which Michael Moore was born in 1954 and in which his dad made a living, is now a basket-case of destroyed housing, its auto workers long out of jobs by GM’s abandonment;
Item: Politicians give campaign contributions not only to the political groups they favor, but to anyone who has a chance of winning. When Obama looked like a victor in the last election, the biggies threw as much money at him as they did to the Republicans. Moral--Both parties profit by the status quo, so do not expect changes from the Democrats and Republicans, both of which believe in the capitalist system;
Item: Juvenile delinquents in Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania are not as delinquent as one might think in exploring its 50million+ dollars jail. The jail was built by a private company which paid off the judge to sent any kid who had a fight in the mall behind bars.
Item: Pilots, the people who have our lives in their hands, make far less money than you think. The recent crash of a plane in Buffalo was piloted by a pair who had to have second jobs to survive, thereby making them fatigued;
Little of the humor comes from the people whom Moore interviews. Just one executive had the wit to reply to Moore’s request for advice, “Stop making movies!”
The picture begins by comparing Ancient Rome to the U.S. today, editors John Walter and Conor O’Neill with a team of co-editors smartly showing how we are in the same predicament as the folks who gave us a system of laws.
Photographer Dan Marracino and Jayme Roy keep busy, on the run, showing up with Michael Moore whenever some action is going down, such as when Moore, in New York’s financial district, bellow into a megaphone that he is there to make a citizens’ arrest of the directors of AIG—whose collapse would supposedly have helped lead us into another Great Depression. The soundtrack is ominous, often ironically so, with contributions from Beethoven’s Ninth and a jazzed-up version of The Internationale (the original was much better).
Economics may still be the dismal science, but a couple of hours with Michael Moore is the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down.
Rated R. 126 minutes. © 2009 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
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