Either Mike has gone soft, or I'm more skpetical than he is!
Capitalism: A Love Story
Directed by Michael Moore
2009, 127 mins.
* * *
You know times are tough when reviewers are more pessimistic than Michael Moore. His latest is, essentially, his breakthrough Roger & Me twenty years later with financial corporations occupying the heavy’s role that General Motors occupied in 1989. Moore leaves Flint, Michigan and travels to Manhattan, where he turns up the heat on the pirates of Wall Street. (Flint, of course, does show up as Moore can’t resist using it as metaphor for economic collapse.)
I went to this film prepared for a ho-hum-been-there-done-that experience. By now we know Moore’s shtick. He’s going to take a film crew to the lobby of some corporate giant, announce he’s there to interview the CEO, and get unceremoniously bounced from the premises by humorless underlings and officious cops. He’ll then stand outside with a hang-dog expression on his face and plead his case as amused bystanders gather. Moore’s guerilla film tactics are shopworn, but his gift for letting arrogant power holders hoist themselves on their own petard remains an potent tool. Moore gets accused of doctoring footage to create propaganda, but that’s too convenient. He doesn’t need to do this because people like Sarah Palin, Baron Hill (D-Indiana), and William Black (R-Illinois) are so smug that they do Moore’s work for him.
So far, so familiar. After an unsurprising first half, things begin to pick up. Moore asks us to consider a distressing question that’s too easily glossed: What is the human cost of capitalism? In our post-Cold War self-congratulatory rush to declare socialism a failed ideology, few pause to consider whether socialism died of natural causes, or whether it was murdered. And speaking of high crimes, one reason why Moore arouses such negative sentiment is that he takes us places we’d rather not go: decaying tract houses where sheriffs evict people from homes nobody—including the bank—wants; to profitable businesses closed down because a handful of greedy stockholders figured an angle to make more money; to hospital emergency rooms filled with people without health insurance…. In other words, Moore shows us the United States as it really is for millions of people, not one bathed in the sunny nostrums of Fox News demagogues, free-market apologists, and Ronald Reagan worshippers.
Moore scores big time in his incisive decoupling of capitalism from democracy. He depicts an economic system so out of control that corporate heads actively discuss democracy as a “problem” that has to be overcome. This isn’t Michael Moore’s paranoia; he produces the actual memos detailing discussions of how to disempower the electorate. The internal attitude towards the poor and unemployed is basically one of “Who gives a damn?” The average American might as well be a Chinese peasant for all they care. Moore shows how the move toward autarky permeates the highest levels. Want to see democracy subverted? Check out Moore’s coverage of how the people’s will was subverted over the Wall Street bailout in less than 48 hours. Those who still think Nancy Pelosi is admirable after this film are probably brain dead! Heed the words of Representative Nancy Kaptur (D-Ohio), who pulls no punches in calling Wall Street’s actions criminal and the Congressional bailout irresponsible, perhaps even itself criminal.
Just when you think Moore has the biggest expose of the decade going, he turns mushy on us. He shows us an inspiring story of a sit-in that forced a runaway employer to pay his workers, yet downplays the fact that all they got was their back pay and a bit of severance; the jobs are gone. And Moore get’s misty-eyed sentimental about Barack Obama’s election in November of 2008. The film’s closing moment of Moore wrapping Wall Street with crime scene yellow tape is funny, but I couldn’t help but think, “My God, Mike Moore actually thinks the American people have risen up and are taking back the country.” To hear Moore tell it, Obama’s election was act one of a second American Revolution. Capitalism: A Love Story is not, ultimately, agit-prop; it’s an inspiring tone-poem to democracy. Michael Moore has been called many things, but until now I didn’t think that “naïve” would be among them.--LV
Capitalism: A Love Story
Directed by Michael Moore
2009, 127 mins.
* * *
You know times are tough when reviewers are more pessimistic than Michael Moore. His latest is, essentially, his breakthrough Roger & Me twenty years later with financial corporations occupying the heavy’s role that General Motors occupied in 1989. Moore leaves Flint, Michigan and travels to Manhattan, where he turns up the heat on the pirates of Wall Street. (Flint, of course, does show up as Moore can’t resist using it as metaphor for economic collapse.)
I went to this film prepared for a ho-hum-been-there-done-that experience. By now we know Moore’s shtick. He’s going to take a film crew to the lobby of some corporate giant, announce he’s there to interview the CEO, and get unceremoniously bounced from the premises by humorless underlings and officious cops. He’ll then stand outside with a hang-dog expression on his face and plead his case as amused bystanders gather. Moore’s guerilla film tactics are shopworn, but his gift for letting arrogant power holders hoist themselves on their own petard remains an potent tool. Moore gets accused of doctoring footage to create propaganda, but that’s too convenient. He doesn’t need to do this because people like Sarah Palin, Baron Hill (D-Indiana), and William Black (R-Illinois) are so smug that they do Moore’s work for him.
So far, so familiar. After an unsurprising first half, things begin to pick up. Moore asks us to consider a distressing question that’s too easily glossed: What is the human cost of capitalism? In our post-Cold War self-congratulatory rush to declare socialism a failed ideology, few pause to consider whether socialism died of natural causes, or whether it was murdered. And speaking of high crimes, one reason why Moore arouses such negative sentiment is that he takes us places we’d rather not go: decaying tract houses where sheriffs evict people from homes nobody—including the bank—wants; to profitable businesses closed down because a handful of greedy stockholders figured an angle to make more money; to hospital emergency rooms filled with people without health insurance…. In other words, Moore shows us the United States as it really is for millions of people, not one bathed in the sunny nostrums of Fox News demagogues, free-market apologists, and Ronald Reagan worshippers.
Moore scores big time in his incisive decoupling of capitalism from democracy. He depicts an economic system so out of control that corporate heads actively discuss democracy as a “problem” that has to be overcome. This isn’t Michael Moore’s paranoia; he produces the actual memos detailing discussions of how to disempower the electorate. The internal attitude towards the poor and unemployed is basically one of “Who gives a damn?” The average American might as well be a Chinese peasant for all they care. Moore shows how the move toward autarky permeates the highest levels. Want to see democracy subverted? Check out Moore’s coverage of how the people’s will was subverted over the Wall Street bailout in less than 48 hours. Those who still think Nancy Pelosi is admirable after this film are probably brain dead! Heed the words of Representative Nancy Kaptur (D-Ohio), who pulls no punches in calling Wall Street’s actions criminal and the Congressional bailout irresponsible, perhaps even itself criminal.
Just when you think Moore has the biggest expose of the decade going, he turns mushy on us. He shows us an inspiring story of a sit-in that forced a runaway employer to pay his workers, yet downplays the fact that all they got was their back pay and a bit of severance; the jobs are gone. And Moore get’s misty-eyed sentimental about Barack Obama’s election in November of 2008. The film’s closing moment of Moore wrapping Wall Street with crime scene yellow tape is funny, but I couldn’t help but think, “My God, Mike Moore actually thinks the American people have risen up and are taking back the country.” To hear Moore tell it, Obama’s election was act one of a second American Revolution. Capitalism: A Love Story is not, ultimately, agit-prop; it’s an inspiring tone-poem to democracy. Michael Moore has been called many things, but until now I didn’t think that “naïve” would be among them.--LV
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