“Capitalism: A Love Story” is every Michael Moore film that preceded it summed up in 120 minutes. And it’s about as timely as any film released this year, if a little less timely than it would have been were it released, say, late last year.
And hating Michael Moore seems easy on the outside, the dulcet-toned voice seemingly dripping with storybook condescension, the politically partisan angles, the reductive stunts.
But calling Michael Moore duplicitous or a liar seems like its missing the fact that he’s actually quite transparent.
While ‘Capitalism’ has its share of awful truths that Moore blanket wraps in easy to enjoy satirical tableauxs, the filmmaker essentially wears his heart on his sleeve for better or worse and what seems incredibly clear is his motivations stem from outrage.
‘Capitalism’ is Michael Moore’s personality incarnate, a passionate zeal of agitprop that like many of his films is replete with lazy swipes, broadstroke flourishes and inspiring, call to arms flashes of brilliance.
Let’s not kid ourselves, the documentary is his form of leftist, no Marxist propaganda and a very romanticized version of events, but he does make a compelling, if sometimes sloppy argument to the power of the people and waking up to smell the coffee.
One things for sure ‘Capitalism’ does not evince any new tricks in the filmmakers arsenal to skewer his subject, nor is it his most coherent, rousing or penetrating picture, but ‘Capitalism’ succeeds in its basic aims: to make you question and at least think about what happened last year with your money (we lost several thousand dollars), provoke outrage at the great economic swindle and make you laugh at the bitter ironies of it all.
Moore paints capitalism as a pervasive system that effects every level of American society: the pilots “paid less than a manager at McDonalds”; the curlicue mathematical formulas of derivatives and the implication of credit default swaps which have turned Wall Street into a giant casino; and the fraudulent life insurance policies companies like Wal-mart take out on their employees, enabling the conglomerates to make a small fortune with their passing while leaving the deceased families struggling to pay the bills. These are “Blue Chips,” Moore observes, “not fly by night companies.”
Throughout, Moore echoes one devastating line: “This is America”; he compares and contrasts what it was like for him growing up as part of a middle-class family in Flint, Michigan, and how it all went so wrong, tracing our hour of error to the election of pretty-boy President Ronald Reagan.
Of course, this is still firmly a Michael Moore film, so along with more tolerable affects like his sing-song narration and hyper-active montages, you also get tight close-ups of people crying on camera, underscored by blaring, synthetic string swells. And the stunts — oh the stunts — Moore takes megaphone in hand once again and instead of piloting a dinghy filled with confused looking 9/11 rescue workers through the waters just outside Guantanamo Bay, this time he confronts General Motors security guards and orders Goldman Sachs gatekeepers to fill his burlap sack with their bail-out money so he may return it to the American people.
Moore simples and distills — sometimes purposefully so Joe the plumber can understand (ostensibly and ironically, this film is a valentine to the middle class worker; many of who sadly won’t bother to see the film); sometimes manipulatively to get his skewed point across and sometimes simply because this is what a no-nonsense type of man believes, but disingenuousness does not seem to be a trait he largely possess unless it’s for comedic value.
These scenes, and the big culminating moment where Moore ropes off the New York Stock Exchange with crime scene tape, wreak of the same broad hokeyness that’s weakened many of Moore’s more effective docs. All we can say in the filmmaker’s defense is that he never seems less than sincere in his aims to make a statement, however stupid the gesture.
But what gives “Capitalism: A Love Story” an added charge is the scope of the film, which revisits themes from almost all of Moore’s previous work; the failure of General Motors he predicted in “Roger & Me,” the continuing healthcare crisis he explored in “Sicko” a couple years ago, and his disdain for big corporations that don’t serve the people, a righteous indignation which has earned him legions of supporters and fervent detractors.
Coming at the end of a decade which has seen Moore’s rise and a backlash he’s done his best to ignore, this film feels like a mostly intelligent, good intentioned effort to collect and collate his thoughts and present an enthusiastic indictment on the corrosiveness of political and corporate practices which have perpetuated the systemic failure of each enterprise he’s previously targeted. Plenty of other filmmakers would have shaved off Moore’s hammy indulgences and gags, further peeling back the rotting woodwork of the economic crisis and its causes. But this time around Moore’s often detrimental extremism affords for just a few more eye-opening moments than it does provoke eye-rolls, and we’ve always found that’s the best way to tally his final score. [B]