Out of Frame: Capitalism: A Love Story
When Michael Moore went looking for funding for his newest film, he claims he told the studio that it would be a kind of sequel to Fahrenheit 9/11, the director's most financially successful film to date. They handed over the cash, and he turned around and made a film that has little to do with that anti-Bush polemic, that is instead unapologetic about biting the corporate hands that feed him. That doesn't mean that Capitalism: A Love Story isn't a sequel, though. It's just that its direct antecedent is Moore's debut (and arguably still his best), Roger & Me, which was released 20 years ago this December.
Roger & Me was an extremely personal film about the utter collapse of one American city, Moore's hometown of Flint, Michigan, as a direct result of General Motors' decision to move tens of thousands of jobs to Mexico and shut down the factories that formed the backbone of Flint's local economy. Capitalism, at its core, takes on the same issues: corporate culture, the expanding gap between rich and poor, government complicity in the entire affair, but expands its focus nationwide. What keeps it from becoming unwieldy is that despite the bigger subject, the film feels nearly as personal as Roger & Me.
Capitalism is ostensibly Moore's target, but he's no economics professor, and his real targets are shady practices in the banking, investment, and mortgage industries, how bad an idea it is to hire executives from those industries to run the economy at the governmental level, the greed that wealth breeds, and ultimately, the catastrophic effects all of this has on the average American as the middle class steadily shrinks. The inexactness of his language will provide great fodder for his political adversaries &mdash quotes like "Capitalism is the opposite of democracy" makes for great sound bites, and Moore explains what he means by it, but it's still fuzzy reasoning since he's basically re-purposing the vocabulary to make his point.
Moreover, many real economics experts will be quick to point out that what Moore is railing against here isn't capitalism as an academic concept, but rather American capitalism – and its accompanying corruption – as it has come to be practiced in the last 25 to 30 years, and it's not really fair to equate one with the other. Then again, the right has been swaying hearts and minds for years by conflating socialism with communism as practiced by the Soviet Union, so it's not as if Moore is alone in the business of semantically misdirected hostility to strengthen an argument.
Plenty of debates will ensue over all those semantics, and many will lodge legitimate beefs with how Moore likes to pick and choose supporters who fit his purposes. In one segment, he asks a number of Catholic clergymen the church's position on capitalism, and the unanimous response is that it is an evil that must be stopped. One suspects he wouldn't lend as much credence to their views if he was making a documentary about abortion or birth control.
But for all the faults one might find with Capitalism, it is still very nearly as good as Roger & Me. Because no matter whether you agree with Moore's politics (and his targets are more bipartisan than ever this time), or whether you agree with his implied solutions (he coyly places a lounge-act version of the Socialist anthem "The Internationale" over the end credits), it's impossible to argue with the notion that we've got a serious economic problem in our hands in this country. The fact that last year's financial meltdown occurred while Moore was in the midst of filming plays directly into his argument.
But more important are his stories of everyday citizens, the 95 percent of Americans who now control less wealth combined than the top 1 percent, and their struggles with mountains of debt, daily foreclosures, joblessness, and a general tenor of despair. He effectively contrasts this with a time in America's history – using his father, a GM line worker, once again as his model of the middle class everyman – when workers could easily afford homes, could send their children to college, and during which time we created an infrastructure in this country that was the envy of the world. A time, he notes, when the wealthiest people paid upwards of three-quarters of their income back to the government to build that infrastructure and create an environment that actually rewarded the working classes.
It's these emotional stories, along with calls to action, as a matter of patriotic duty and as confirmation of our love of democracy, where the film shines. Moore's film isn't just about pointing fingers at those who have gotten us into this mess, but about mobilizing working people to stop waiting for someone else to fix it, and to stop sitting idly by while their wages, pensions, health care, and their very homes are stolen from them. In this respect, Moore is at the top of his game, and at the very least, Capitalism may spark some much needed conversations about America's problems among the people who are affected most by economic strife, and who have the least real power.
Opens today at a number of theaters throughout the area.