Capitalism: A Love Story (2009): Striking Message, Tepid Packaging
Written: Oct 22 '09 (Updated Oct 22 '09)
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Product Rating:
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| Bang For The Buck |
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Pros: Worrying.
Cons: Wearying.
The Bottom Line: If you are into current politics and economics, worth a look.
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| Ed.Williamson's Full Review: Capitalism: A Love Story |
Michael Moore movies used to be a lot of fun, but this one is not so much fun as it is, well, stun. He gives us a powerful message about the "evils" of capitalism (ironically, three Roman Catholic priests are the main ethical authorities on "good" and "evil" in the world, for what it's worth; in the last few years clergy of all stripes have not always looked like the best moral authorities around) but the film itself is a long, drawn-out left-brain economics lecture that drains more than it entertains. The best MM efforts have balanced funny "people-stuff" with statistics, but the numbers weigh on you wearily here.
Not that Moore doesn't give us a compelling case against the political-economic system which is modern capitalism, from his left-of-left point of view. He shows us example-after-example of how in America the capitalist system has given us cretin-after-cretin of greedy little corporate-suited demigods in the extreme "upper class" of American society who have selfishly put the screws to the middle and lower classes in order to gain massive wealth and power for themselves and their good-old-boy cronies back in the country club bar. Moore exposes these barbaric, thumb-their-noses-at-the-"little"-people executives as not simply greedy, not simply uncaring about the body economic, but only slightly different from organized, bloody-handed mafia dons in name. In other words, not only is Tony Soprano running the health system in America (as I wrote of another Michael Moore film in an Epinions essay about American health care some time back), but Tony Soprano is cloned into most of the top CEO positions in the Fortune 500 roster, in Moore's perspective.
Would that it were all that simple, Michael. Part of what Moore says is spot-on true about capitalism; there is a higher-than-normal percentage of corporate business leadership in America which is criminally greedy and predatory over anyone they can exploit. These, and all the lemmings who raced down the sewer pipe with them, are the same idiots who brought you the Great Recession of 2008-2009. No doubt about it.
But even so, you have to wonder, in the "light" of Moore's film about capitalism, is he throwing the baby out with the bath, as we used to say? He and his Catholic fathers brand capitalism as "evil", but a couple of salient questions immediately come to mind.
First of all, the heart of the evil in "evil capitalism" is actually greed, the filmmaker tells us, and yet greed can infect any "ism" such as, not only capitalism, but fascism, communism, and socialism, etc. All of the "isms" have historically been shown to be partially corrupt in certain situations where greedy human beings have hidden within the ranks and the grey office buildings, be they in New York, Detroit, Moscow, Tokyo, Berlin, New Delhi, Peking, or Rome, etc.- like roaches, in the darkness of corporate, bureaucratic, and sometimes governmental fog.
So why is Michel Moore singling out capitalism? Ostensibly, it is because Moore loves America and he thinks capitalism as a system has impoverished the citizenry of America, as archetypally evidenced by the sad state of his hometown of Flint, Michigan. And, I suppose, in derivative forms, the rest of the world.
But knowing Moore's point of reference, it might be a couple of other things.
First, he sentimentally longs for the good old days when all was 1950-ishly "happy" in the "Happy Days" of the GM town of Flint, Michigan and the rest of the country, when he was growing up, until something destroyed it all, and that something, in his eyes, was American business management despotism. He coyly sidesteps the fact that American unions like the United Auto Workers, in a fit of their own brand of greed, jacked up wage-benefits packages to heights in the 1960s that would have made Don Corleone proud. In a matter of a few years a $5,000.00 Chevrolet then cost $15,000.00, thanks to the greed of both management people and union people. In other words, Moore may be the "pot calling the kettle black" (no offence intended, Black Americans.) And all have sinned and fallen short, not just the "suits."
As Pogo once said, "We have found the enemy, and he is us." Pogo may not have been completely right, but he was onto something: Greed has become as American as apple pie. Not that everyone else in the world doesn't long to have all the capitalist toys Americans enjoy, and if their country was in our position, they'd be doing the same stuff, but we have become expert at avarice. Let your 401K become a 201K and suddenly that's all you can think about. The redneck farmer loves his subsidy check as much as the welfare recipient, though the farmer may complain all day about welfare recipients getting government money. People still gamble all their retirement money on One Sure Thing rather than diversifying and taking it easy about thinking about the Market. Greed sells. To everyone, unfortunately. And the right-wing media wonks would have us believe that unless you aren't filled with greed, you just aren't American. (I beg to differ- and I say THEY are the truly Un-American ones. But I digress.)
Second, Michael Moore, being a good child of the 1960s, is part hippie, as are many of us, and hippies always liked to fight against the "establishment," and here Moore has found another enemy in the establishment to bash in attacking capitalism. We have heard this same blah-blah-blah since Karl Marx, and heard that if we just get rid of capitalism all will be free bubble-up and the big rock candy mountain. Personally I go along with rock band The Who in their best song: "We Won't Get Fooled Again"; i.e. "The new boss looks like the old boss."
Thus, the bottom line on this movie is that while it is compelling, it is an oversimplification. You look at all the "isms" and you pick out the one which has the least of the evils, all the while knowing that all of them have some degree of evil in them. The real devil in the details isn't capitalism, it's greed. And while capitalism has a lot of flaws, given the greedy human nature that non-altruistic persons have, even so capitalism overall, in situations where it has been truly tempered by authentic love for one's fellow human beings, has given us the best economic system around. Which is why Michael Moore is in a tunnel-vision minority, and probably why the theater audience when we went to see the film was so small.
Greed is the problem, not the overlying capitalist system. And you don't need a clergyman, like I have been in part of my life, to tell you that, any more than, to coin a phrase, you need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind blows. Who is greed's top cheerleader these days? Try Fox News. If we can get away from the greed-promoting mindset of Fox News and those like their denizens, we may be getting somewhere.
Back to the film at hand; go see it if you are interested in American politics and economics. It may not be a true compass, but it is one which will enliven your mind about a lot of things anyway.
Three Stars: ***
<<Another original film review by Ed Williamson>>
Recommended:
Yes
Movie Mood: Die-hard Fans Only
Viewing Method: Other
Film Completeness: Looked complete to me.
Worst Part of this Film: Duration
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Ed.Williamson
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Member: Ed Williamson
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