FEATURED JOBS
Comments (0)This past week, documentarian and auteur Michael Moore unveiled his newest polemic entitled Capitalism, A Love Story. He brings it close to home with a couple of scenes and situations that pertain to our home town.
During the movie, he has several discussions with Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) sitting on a park bench outside the U.S. Capitol, and in one of his comedic trades, he attempts to speak to former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who is ensconced in an office building that is home to the Paul Nitze School of International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Moore is standing outside the building, calling Paulson on the phone to no avail.
If you’re a fan of Moore, like I am, you’ll eat this one up. The movie opens with an old, grainy Hollywood-era film documenting the fall of the Roman Empire and gives all too-obvious parallels to our current status in the world scene, and ends with a short speech filmed in black and white given by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt talks about a new bill of rights that would endow freedoms to the working class. Ironically, after the end of WWII and after Roosevelt’s death, our defeated enemies of Japan, Germany, and Italy adopt some of the provisos.
In between the opening and the ending, Moore is all over the place with his perceptions of what has happened to our country, and what caused the problems. He believes we began to fall off the rails when President Jimmy Carter went south with his notorious speech about America headed for the shitter. When Reagan took over it was “Katy, bar the door,” and the march to greed and destruction culminated with the last group of thieves and bandits that took control of the government during George W’s reign. Along the way, he examines the decline and fall of General Motors, a favorite topic carried over from Roger And Me, and then he goes off on Wall Street with a vengeance.
If I quantified the movie in terms of emotional toll I could attribute to Moore’s direction and storytelling capability, I would say that 33.3% of the movie is very moving and touching and hits you hard, 33.3% is hilarious and very innovative and creative as only Moore can provide, and33.3% is utter bullshit.
The most moving scene to me is when he goes with his father, a retired auto worker from Flint at the AC spark plug plant, to view where the plant was located, and to reminisce about his career. There is no plant now, just a big vacant, bulldozed lot, and Moore’s father puts it all in perspective.
Moore also films a family about to face foreclosure and lose everything, including their family farm that had been theirs for several generations. The best one, however, is the story about the workers at a Chicago plant who get notice their factory is closing and they are not going to get paid. The workers take matters their own hands, and occupy the building demanding that they be compensated for what is owed to them. It’s the beginning of the revolution, according to Moore, and you become vested in the cause.
The funny stuff is Moore doing his schtick a la Roger and Me. He takes a bullhorn outside the AIG building on Wall Street and starts announcing that he is there attempting to make a citizen’s arrest of the criminals inside the building. He also attempts to enter several buildings to interview some of the major players involved in the financial freefall, and he is met at the door by security and is rebuffed, naturally. Moore is a master at milking those scenes. The best one, though, is when he takes yellow crime scene tape and wraps it around the complete perimeter of the Goldman Sachs building. That one was a classic.
As far as the superfluous, you can judge that for yourself. The movie has some filler and takes unnecessary diversions that aren’t critical to his thesis.
Moore has been at this game for a long time. Some of his work is brilliant. His debut on the national scene, Roger and Me, was a critical and commercial success. That movie, as it turns out, was a prequel to Capitalism. His best movie was Fahrenheit 9/11, which focused on the war in Iraq and how badly the Bush Administration lied to the American public and how entangled our affairs are with the Saudis. This movie had it all. Again, in some ways, that was a prequel as well.
With Moore, there are no shades of gray. He affirms the belief that this country is in dire need of a critical self-examination and a turnaround that would equate to a revolution of thought, words, and actions. Moore believes we’re about ready to bring democracy back to the capitalist markets and with the election of President Obama, the tide will turn. I hope he’s right.
