Directed by: Michael Moore
"The rich do none of the work, pay none of the taxes. The middle class does most of the work and foots most of the bill. The poor are there...just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keeps them showing up at those jobs."- George Carlin
Michael Moore reminisces about his childhood in which his father worked for GM and the job wasn't going away anytime soon. His father paid the house off before Moore had finished kindergarten, the family had a new car every three years, and they visited New York every other summer. Things were good and GM was prosperous. Apparently, not prosperous enough according to GM, because they set the wheels in motion via layoffs and cutbacks that allowed Moore to grow up into the filmmaker who made Roger & Me. If there is one thing Moore never tires of visiting, it's corporate greed that has gone unchecked. Roger & Me and The Big One are two previous films that explored corporations' recent obsession with layoffs helping to contribute to a healthier company bottom line.
Here, Moore goes over the same territory, but amidst highly publicized bank collapses and the ushering in of President Obama. The film depicts outgoing President Bush as akin to a co-conspirator in big business's neverending quest to squeeze a few more sheckles out of everyone before leaving office. Bush created such a mess by failing to regulate banks and big business that it's no wonder Obama has yet to be able to clean it up 18 months into his term. Of course, many blame Obama for his failure to clean this up, but that's another argument for another time.
Actually, lassez-faire government regulation of big business really kicked in as early as Reagan's administration. Jimmy Carter conducted a televised address in which he warns of an economy going belly up because greed and profits overshadowed everything. Moore, in his narration, said, "Many thought, 'That guy's a bummer. We need someone else. Who else but Hollywood's most famous corporate spokesman, Ronald Reagan?" The rest is history. Carter wasn't the first President to recognize a need for better treatment of America's workers. In the film, a never before shown newsreel of a very sick President Franklin Roosevelt shows the President speaking about "adding another Bill Of Rights" which includes a right to quality education for all, a good job for all, and a government that will take care of them. Funny how other countries, like the ones the US conquered in World War II, received many of these benefits, but these benefits aren't available to American citizens.
Despite its historical context, Capitalism: A Love Story covers much of the same ground as Moore's previous two films on this subject. People getting thrown out of homes due to foreclosure and guys like a real estate broker who calls himself "The Condo Vulture" proudly swoop in to make a profit off of that. "People are always ready to pounce on other's misfortunes," says the real estate broker, which is Moore's message in today's capitalistic economy. There is plenty of misfortune to be had, mostly caused by the corporations themselves.
Will films like this cause big corporations to examine themselves and their practices? The answer is no, especially when Lehman Brothers and other banks used government bailout funds to give out record bonuses to executives in a very public way. Bonuses for what? Probably for being able to persuade the government to give them $700 million in taxpayer money.
Corporate response to this film will probably be (and I'm borrowing from the last line of Ebert's review of The Big One): "Yeah? And?"
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