What is Capitalism? How do we define it in the 21st century? How did we define it even fifty years ago when America appeared to be riding high and the middle class did quite well without foreign competitors (without those, you know, other countries in Europe and Asia working at full capacity)? How is it a moral issue for someone to be fully invested (no pun intended) in a system that requires that high profits be continually maintained? How about, most importantly, when a system that Churchill once said was simply the "least evil" one available, corrupts people's lives, systems of government, and one's own immortal soul? More to the point, what would Jesus do? If you ask Michael Moore, or for that matter one of Moore's priests he interviewed for this documentary, he would not quite fit in the corporate world. At all. Unless they re-dub King of Kings, that is.
These and many more questions are asked by Moore in his latest film, perhaps even more ambitious and powerful than Fahrenheit 9/11. He cites Ronald Regan as one of the key contributors, maybe the key one in political-theatrical terms, to how Capitalism is today, as he gives a speech early on with the CEO of Merryl-Lynch right by his side feeding him coaching on-tape. But it's really many other things that have just gone wild from the seeds of Regan's corporate free-for-all that let the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and jobs are lost as profits keep gaining. This latter point stems from Moore's first movie, Roger & Me, and in many ways this is an epic revisit that shouldn't have to be, but is, of the things Moore was tackling back then with GM's closing of plants in Flynt, Michigan. By now things are completely out of control, and the set pieces in Capitalism: A Love Story all make up a narrative of abhorrent greed and corporate irresponsibility... perhaps that isn't even a hard enough word for some of the things shown here.
From the judge who puts away juveniles to a prison in Wilkes-Barre, PA, that is run by a corporation that gives big kick-backs to the judge that makes its young misdemeanor offenders into pieces of property, to a gut-wrenching account of "Dead Peasants", which means that your boss, having filed a life insurance policy with their big corporate owner, will get paid the sooner you die, to the horror of airline pilot pay brought up by none-other than Sully the hero pilot, to just the simple use of the word 'derivative' and how incomprehensible it is to non-Harvard graduates, it all adds up. It's all presented with some sense of sarcasm, but always with a pill of truth, sometimes with people still dumbfounded by their foreclosed homes or those husbands and family members of the "Peasants."
It's not that Moore is up to anything completely new in terms of his style. Indeed its the kind of film that takes into account Moore's personal history, which he's done in the past if not quite as informative (i.e. his original intentions to be a priest), while showing how things have changed for him in the twenty years he's been doing this (one guy he tries to ask a question with responds, "Stop making movies!") And, sure, Moore still tries to do his old tricks like trying to make citizen's arrests of the CEO's of the big banks, or pulling up a huge truck to get back the bail-out money that no one seems to know where it went. For better or worse, he still makes his movies the way he wants to, with lots of archive footage edited and scored at this point to a kind of slick, propaganda-style perfection.
Even if its central end-premise to the audience mostly makes sense when coupled with Roosevelt's 2nd Bill of Rights- in a speech shown here for the sake of a heartrending climax - its how the film gains momentum as it goes along, how more and more it goes to lengths to bring the audience in as active participants, that makes it unforgettable. There's a lot in the film to be angry about, and more, even if the don't agree with the filmmaker, should be. What happened last year was, as one interviewee puts it, equal to a dam that burst but started as a small leak years ago.
But there is some hope, or the possibilities of it, and that too makes Capitalism worth your while. It's the kind of bittersweet crowd-pleaser that also has some good storytelling; we see early on the sad plight of the factory in Chicago where its workers are told they have three days till they're fired. For those not informed on this whole story it may look like the end... but Moore brings it back around in the last quarter of the film as one of those triumphant stories of a sit-down that actually, ultimately, works! For a filmmaker who has been focused on the ills of American greed, of the richest 1% vs the other 95%, for so long, and for that to be such a mammoth undertaking to cover in two hours, to give just the slight glimpses of light at the end of the tunnel is invigorating.
This is the kind of movie some people will rush out to see, and some will surely not see it, likely out of a personal disdain for Moore as a personality/filmmaker (I know both sides personally). But for those who give Moore one more chance - just as Moore himself gives one last roll of the dice to get an interview with General Motors after twenty years of attempts- the film provides vivid and horrifying insights into the state of the nation's economic (not)-well-being. And by the way, he isn't leaving America, so if he still hates it... I must have missed seeing it somewhere down the line. A+
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