Capitalism: a Love Story

[Dimmauk]

Michael Moore’s Anti-Capitalist Attack Dazzles Italians: Review



Review by Farah Nayeri

Sept. 8 (Bloomberg) -- “Michael, we love you!”

Filmmaker Michael Moore is promoting his new movie “Capitalism: A Love Story” to the media at the Venice Film Festival. He is stopped in his tracks when an Italian female reporter unfurls a banner bearing those adoring words.

Moore is getting good press in Italy, where his movie had its world premiere. “Interessantissimo” (highly interesting), cheered the daily La Stampa, while Corriere della Sera gave it three stars out of four. La Repubblica devoted whole pages to the Michigan-born director, and reported that he had a double serving of spaghetti al pomodoro sent up to his hotel room.

The 55-year-old moviemaker has much to rant about these days, what with the September 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and the $700 billion taxpayer bailout of the financial system. In his two-hour documentary, we see him try to take an empty canvas bag into the heavily guarded headquarters of a bailed-out bank, declaring, “We’re here to get the money back for the American people.”

Yet Moore covers a lot more than just the Wall Street rescue, or “financial coup d’etat” as he calls it. His documentary is a wholesale indictment of capitalism: funny, gloomy and even a little preachy.

“Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil,” Moore lectures in the final voiceover. “You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that’s good for all people, and that something is called democracy.”

At the news conference, Moore said he had told his crew to consider this “the last film they let us make.” His aim, he said, was to “speak the words that need to be spoken,” and “raise the issues that need to be raised.”

Moore Echoes

What we get is a grab-bag, best-of-Michael-Moore compilation, with echoes of his other movies “Roger & Me” (1989), “Fahrenheit 9/11” (2004) and “Sicko” (2007).

“Capitalism” opens with heart-rending foreclosure scenes. A young black man watches as his lifelong home is boarded up. A white woman sobs as a short-sleeved sheriff appears with an eviction notice.

“This is capitalism,” says the Moore voiceover, “a system of taking and giving, mostly taking.”

Next, we meet a Florida-based man who works for a company called Condo Vultures. It deals with clients who buy foreclosed homes and sell them at a profit. The difference between him and a real vulture? “I don’t vomit on myself!” he cackles.

As Moore’s movie zooms out to show the many other pernicious aspects of capitalism, it loses focus.

Reagan’s Election

For historical context, he provides a short lesson in postwar economics that starts with a depiction of his comfortable 1950s childhood as an autoworker’s son and ends with the 1980 election of President Ronald Reagan.

“The country would now be run by a corporation,” says Moore, pointing out that Reagan’s Treasury secretary Donald Regan was previously the chairman and chief executive officer of Merrill Lynch & Co.

Moore then offers illustrations of capitalism’s worst excesses. A company running a juvenile home gets youths locked up for no good reason -- squabbling in a mall, mocking faculty on the Web -- so it can overcharge the state. Other companies collect hefty life-insurance payments on dead employees. Underpaid airline pilots live on food stamps, sell their plasma, and moonlight as dog walkers to make ends meet.

Moore shows how citizens are taking the matter into their own hands: through collective company ownership, through sit- ins, and through squatter action. He encourages them to do more.

Jesus Redubbed

In an openly religious section, he interviews a priest who calls capitalism “immoral, obscene, outrageous.” Jesus wouldn’t approve either, says Moore. He tries to prove it by redubbing an old movie and making Christ utter free-market messages such as: “He’ll have to pay out of pocket.”

“Somehow, I don’t think Jesus came to earth to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange,” Moore deadpans.

Not till the second half does Moore finally get down to what he has pitched his film to be: a lampooning of Wall Street. This section has an urgency that the others lack. It’s scathing, effective and hilarious.

Wall Street bankers are stopped on the street for a definition of derivatives. All are silent, except for one, who replies, “Don’t make any more movies!” A former Lehman Brothers executive and a Harvard University pundit are no better at explaining the financial instruments.

Goldman Sachs

Moore gives a blow-by-blow account of the bailout. He suggests that former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s prior job as chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. led the administration to “use the taxpayers to bail out Goldman and other favored financial institutions.” (A spokesman for Goldman Sachs, contacted via e-mail, declined to comment on Moore’s statement.)

Here, the facts and figures speak for themselves, and Moore has a field day rolling them off. In the final scene, we see him sticking a long yellow strip of tape on a row of Wall Street security barriers. It reads: “CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS.”

“Capitalism: A Love Story” once again shows Moore as a talented pamphleteer and a voice in American democracy. Only, the film runs on too long, and tries to be too many things at once. Moore’s best movies are single-issue ones, like “Sicko” (on health care) and “Bowling for Columbine” (about gun laws). Too bad this one didn’t make Wall Street the sole theme.



I know this might belong in the Bentertainment Geekly section, but this subject is something that has been coming up alot in politics. Its very interesting how popular Sicko was in Europe. I guess the fact that Health care for all is a money making business in the US, and not a Universal right is entertaining to those Countries.

[Acturus]

I wonder how much of Moore's popularity in Europe is due to his journalistic credibility, or just due to his amazing ability to portray a stereotypical self-hating American.

[Olo401]

Moore is a complete asshole and refuses to take the high road when making his points, resorting instead to fabricating & staging some of stuff he puts on film. He is an unfortunate discredit to the causes he highlights in his films because of this, and it's a real shame because he simply doesn't need to pull stunts to make his points valid.

[Beckwin]

fuck the haters, Moore makes good points. I feel like shit-talking Moore is just about equivalent to saying Olbermann is merely a liberal Limbaugh/Hannity/Beck.

[Olo401]

fuck the haters, Moore makes good points. I feel like shit-talking Moore is just about equivalent to saying Olbermann is merely a liberal Limbaugh/Hannity/Beck.

I'm not saying he doesn't make good points. I'm saying his need to deliberately fabricate evidence is unnecessary and damages his work.

[Correction]

What's wrong with shit-talking Moore, again? He deliberately stages events then films them, calling himself an Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker the whole way. He has a bullying style of interviewing and often shows little respect for anybody who gets in his way (e.g. his Charlton Heston interview). For every one decent point he makes there are hundreds of others he could make (and that any respectable documentary maker would make), but that it gets in the way of his megalomania in comforting that one crying woman for a few minutes longer on screen.

I think I stopped learning from his films about 3/4 of the way through Bowling for Columbine, and I get the feeling that he's just remaking Roger & Me/The Big One for the financial sector. If there is one thing he presents in this film that I didn't already learn from say, reading a newspaper or watching his other movies, I'll be stunned.

[eunhye]

This ties in very well to capitalism.
Senate must raise debt ceiling above $12T - TheHill.com

“Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren,” Obama said in a 2006 floor speech that preceded a Senate vote to extend the debt limit. “America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.”

Obama later joined his Democratic colleagues in voting en bloc against raising the debt increase.

What do you call this?

Now Obama is asking Congress to raise the debt ceiling, something lawmakers are almost certain to do despite misgivings about the federal debt. The ceiling already has been hiked three times in the past two years, and the House took action earlier this year to raise the ceiling to $13 trillion.

Congress has little choice. Failing to raise the cap could lead the nation to default in mid-October, when the debt is expected to exceed its limit, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said. In August, Geithner asked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to increase the debt limit as soon as possible.

Yeah, the death of capitalism.

[Dimmauk]

Most of the time, the people that Moore "Bullies" are the ones that really deserve it the most.
Staging events isnt really a true documentary, but the events do have a point to make and are real.

He really does make good points, that are based in fact. Would the Academy give someone an award a Documentary that wasn't factual? Documentaries have to be fact checked many times in order to be called a "Documentary"

[Olo401]

"Death" of Capitalism is a misnomer. Capitalism, by nature and definition, is a chaotic and destructive economic force. That's the unfortunate price that is paid to have a free market.

[Blabj]

I wonder how much of Moore's popularity in Europe is due to his journalistic credibility, or just due to his amazing ability to portray a stereotypical self-hating American.

I lol'd. I can tell you it's definitely one of those with my group of friends.

[Olo401]

Most of the time, the people that Moore "Bullies" are the ones that really deserve it the most.
Staging events isnt really a true documentary, but the events do have a point to make and are real.

He really does make good points, that are based in fact. Would the Academy give someone an award a Documentary that wasn't factual? Documentaries have to be fact checked many times in order to be called a "Documentary"

Cmon now.. there are facts and then there's artistic license. Moore's staged bits, like the "rifle bank" scene or the heavily edited interview with Charlton Heston in BFC, are so twisted from the actual events and put out of context that they can't possibly be considered factual anymore. Moore gets way with it because of artistic license.

[Sirrus_Asura]

"Death" of Capitalism is a misnomer. Capitalism, by nature and definition, is a chaotic and destructive economic force. That's the unfortunate price that is paid to have a free market.

Explain plox.

[Beckwin]

fuck charlton heston.

we finally got that damn rifle out of his hands.

[sephir]

I used to really like Moore's films (Roger & me was great) but then he started to make bad films after bowling for columbine. He sometimes has a good purpose but now he just seems bent on making his point regardless.

[wipers]

I don't trust anyone that weighs over 300 pounds.


Edit: Even if he lost weight I wouldn't trust him.

[Olo401]

"Death" of Capitalism is a misnomer. Capitalism, by nature and definition, is a chaotic and destructive economic force. That's the unfortunate price that is paid to have a free market.

Explain plox.

Not sure how I could have made it more clear. Naked, unregulated capitalist markets go through a consistent cycle of destroying and recreating themselves. Think of it as a ouroboros cross-bred with a phoenix; ever eating itself and being reborn from its own wastes.

[Takedown3]

sicko was awesome and shows how the American health care system could be

def think this one will be the gravy on my poutine cant wait to see all the idiots in suits get harassed and made to look like giant idiots

[Sirrus_Asura]

Not sure how I could have made it more clear. Naked, unregulated capitalist markets go through a consistent cycle of destroying and recreating themselves. Think of it as a ouroboros cross-bred with a phoenix; ever eating itself and being reborn from its own wastes.

Examples?

[Day]

fuck charlton heston.

we finally got that damn rifle out of his hands.

lol'd

[Olo401]

Examples?

Uhh.. just look at the entire cyclical history of the market. No better example than that.