The most stirring words spoken by Franklin D. Roosevelt, words that have a prominent place in Mat Whitecross and Michael Winterbottom's stunning and convincing documentary, are "The only thing we have to fear-is fear itself." Poetic though this may sound, this is hardly the case. Today in America we have a legitimate fear of terrorist attacks that can equal or exceed those of 9/11. Unemployment stands at ten percent but is, more realistically, seventeen percent. The Obama Health Care bill that would insure tens of millions of now uninsured people, looks as though it may go down to defeat or emasculation given the victory of a Republican who ironically has been chosen to fill the seat of the Senate's most liberal member, Ted Kennedy. Bankruptcies abound, foreclosures are executed, despair, mistrust, and anger fill our land.
THE SHOCK DOCTRINE
Sundance Selects
Reviewed for Arizona Reporter by Harvey Karten, NYFCO
Grade: A-
Directed by: Mat Whitecross, Michael Winterbottom
Written By: Naomi Klein from the book "The Shock Doctrine-The Rise of Disaster Capitalism"
Cast: Naomi Klein, narrated by Kieran O'Brien, based on Naomi Klein's book "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism"
Screened at: Critics' DVD
Opens: January 28, 2010 (at Sundance)
As for the cause, there is little doubt that Naomi Klein, whose book "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" (available from Amazon for $10.85) has been visually adapted for the screen, there is one word: Capitalism. For many of the viewers, probably already amassing on the political left, the documentary is preaching to the choir. Those who insist that capitalism is an unmitigated boon not only for the U.S. but for any country that adopts its tenets may walk out in the middle. "The Shock Doctrine," like Michael Moore's "Capitalism," will not please those who believe (wrongly in my view) that documentaries should be balanced.
Among the villains who are virtually crucified by Naomi Klein-who is seen delivering lectures to rapt, SRO auditoriums-is Milton Friedman, whose belief in the free market garnered for him the Nobel Prize in Economics-a reward that just months ago went to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, whose Keynsian views are diametrically opposed to Friedman's. One gets the impression that Ms. Klein considers that the accolades of the Nobel committee for Friedman are no more valid than those given years ago for Peace-to (are you ready for this?) Yassir Arafat.
Opening the doc on sensory deprivation experimentation, which is considered more disastrous to "patients" than pain and torture and which allows those experimented upon to be more open to "suggestions," Whitecross and Winterbottom use the metaphor to lambast the ways that some nations, often with the covert help of agencies within the United States, have forced Milton Friedman's ideas on their publics-with disastrous results. Some examples are trotted out in chronological order. Take, for example, Chile. When Salvador Allende was elected to the presidency, the U.S. government considered him a Marxist who would hurt American investments in that land, particularly given Allende's nationalization of major Chilean industry. The CIA allegedly funded the truckers' union whose strike brought the economy of that South American state to a standstill. Utlimately the Chilean armed forces intervened, Allende was assassinated, and General Pinochet with heavy support of American diplomats like Henry Kissenger took over. Imprisonments, torture and mass executions of opponents followed.
Argentina fell under the sway over a similar fascistic government: thousands "disappeared." Margaret Thatcher, the "iron lady" of Britain who was supported by our own president Ronald Reagan, took the prime minister's office, deregulating water, gas, telephone, and the airlines industries. Inflation and unemployment were left in its wake. In Russia, communism fell largely from Gorbachev's glasnost policies, but when he was thrown out, Boris Yeltsin sold off state industries leading to the rise of a small class of billionaires while masses of Russians suffered economically. In Iraq, Paul Bremmer fired 500,000 workers from state jobs while the entire war became privatized: private contractors actually outnumber the military in that hapless nation, not coincidentally the fourth largest supplier of oil in the world.
Clear, bold videos-not grainy, "you-tube" style celluloid-- punctuate the crashing of terrorist aircraft into the World Trade Center on 9/11, wild demonstrations in the streets of Chile, Argentina, Britain, and Pakistan (the last of which should have logically been the country for the U.S. to attack, if any). Ultimately "The Shock Doctrine" is a wake-up call: the so-called free market is free-for those of us in possession of lots and lots of money.
THE SHOCK DOCTRINE (Sundance Selects)
Unrated. 79 minutes. © 2010 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
