Capitalism: A Love Story

2009-09-25
By Sergio A. Mims

CAST: MICHAEL MOORE
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED: MICHAEL MOORE
**/1/2 – TWO AND HALF STARS

Twenty years after his first feature in 1989, Roger and Me, in which he took on General Motors and their ruinous labor and business policies which ran Flint, Michigan into the ground, Michael Moore has continued to be a thumb in the eye of corporate financial debauchery, governmental ineptitude and the culture of greed which has seeped into America since the Reagan/ Bush era.

Now after taking on the car industry, the health care industry in Sicko, the gun culture in Bowling for Columbine (perhaps Moore’a most sustained and focused film) and the post 9/11 fear propaganda policies in his screeching howl of a film,  Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore sinks his teeth into an even largest issue, that of capitalism itself and how it has tarnished and corrupted America.

In his new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore chronicles a system which turned from one where people led happy, productive and successful lives into one divided into the “haves even more” and the “haves even less than zero”. Where Wall Street has morphed into a giant casino with the odds even more stacked in its favor and where common, regular people just barely making a living are screwed by the powerful and super rich in the pursuit of power and wealth.

However this time Moore mayhave aimed too high and shot wide of the mark.  No doubt rushed into production after last year’s disastrous financial meltdown, Moore’s subject is too big, wide and deep to put into a two hour movie. An 8-hour miniseries like a Ken Burns documentary would have been more suitable and even then would have just scratched the surface of this huge subject.

As a result, despite some brilliantly effective and powerful sequences, Capitalism is too scattershot in approach to be truly effective. The film lurches  breathlessly from the prison-for-profit business to the ridiculously low salaries of airplane pilots, to the massive increase of foreclosures, to workers’ protests, to the behind closed door shenanigans leading to massive Wall Street  bailouts, but never stays around
enough to make a real impact.

No doubt Moore’s intent was to show how the faults of capitalism and greed have impacted every segment of American life and to reveal the fake wizards behind the curtains, but the film’s helter-skelter, unfocused structure hurts the powerful effect that Moore was going after.

In addition, because of the rushed production Moore falls back too often on previous old tricks, repeating ideas and themes from his other documentaries and resorting to his now tired routine of trying to barge into corporate office buildings unannounced to meet with company execs only to be turned away by security, as if he realistically had any chance in the first place.

Also, with the exception of a family thrown out of their family farm, the film is curiously lacking in real human touches, or fat cat CEOs and politicians being made fools of, though by now they know l to run for cover when Moore shows up with his camera.

Yet, the film is by no means a failure. Taken in Parts it is a searing, brutal indictment designed to make you outraged and angry about how bad things have gone while we watching American Idol.

Though the parts are greater than the whole, Capitalism: A Love Story is worth watching and a story worth telling.

Film critic, lecturer and festival consultant Sergio Mims covers all things film from the city that works, Chicago. He is a regular contributor to EbonyJet.com.