CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY - DVD review

Michael Moore must feel like the man in the fairy tale who tried to tell everyone that the Emperor has no clothes. No one listens. Instead, people (especially those of Republican ilk) seem to think of him more as another Chicken Little who's just imagining things.

But Moore didn't imagine a secret Citibank memo to its richest investors, which he managed to unearth. In it, the bank's top brass bragged that the U.S. is no longer a democracy, but rather a plutocracy in which the richest 1 percent are in control of 95 percent of the nation's wealth . . . and money is power. The memo touted the strides made during the second Bush administration to roll back taxes on the wealthy and swing the economic pendulum permanently in favor of corporations. The only thing that investors had to worry about was the one-vote principle--if that 99 percent of the population gets fed up with rich-rule and decides to revolt. Well, as polarized as the U.S. has been in recent years, that's not going to happen. Witness the latest health-care "debate" in which Republicans responded to a call for a national health care system by trotting out the "S" word: "socialism." And that's the antithesis of capitalism, which, as Moore's film points out, has somehow become twisted up with Christian theology in this country.

No matter. If you're Michael Moore, you make documentary films that are two parts investigative reporting, one part storytelling, and one part humor. And Moore really comes up with a zinger on this issue. In one of the most irreverent (and truthful) moments in "Capitalism: A Love Story," he grabs footage from an old Hollywood biblical epic and inserts his own words, so that Jesus says to a man who comes to him asking to be healed, "I'm sorry, I cannot heal your pre-existing condition." Then, turning to the crowd, Jesus proclaims, "This man will have to pay out-of-pocket!"

Moments like that--as outrageous and entertaining as they might be for half of the viewers who see this film--are really preaching to the choir. But Moore persists. In some ways he's come a long way since his first acclaimed documentary "Roger & Me" (1989), in which he demanded answers after General Motors closed its factories in Moore's native Flint, Michigan and opened replacement factories in Mexico where workers received far less pay and weren't unionized. His films have become more thoroughly investigated and more thoroughly entertaining. Yet, he's really still trying to get Americans to share the outrage he's felt since those GM closures, and to understand that corporations are getting Americans to go along with their directives because of the promise of the American dream. Bush used $300 rebates to get average Americans to buy into his tax cuts for the wealthy, and in "Capitalism: A Love Story" Moore makes his most blunt indictment of our economic system to date. Capitalism rewards greed, he says, and that's the main flaw in the system.

In "Capitalism: A Love Story" Moore juggles three main elements: presentation of material he uncovered through his investigative reporting, presentation of case studies (often milked for emotional effect), the use of vintage footage to illustrate an ironic point, and grandstanding stunts--as when he shows up at AIG headquarters to make a citizen's arrest of the CEO, or when he tries to enter GM Headquarters in order to "talk" to the CEO, who's ignored him. And through it all we get Moore's smooth-but-sarcastic personal voiceover.

He opens the film with Hollywood footage of ancient Rome and a voiceover of a historian telling about the factors that caused Rome to fall. And then gradually Moore inserts images of Americans in power at just the right moment so that the voiceover talking about Rome's problems suddenly apply quite obviously to the United States. Of course, that's a Chicken Little gambit of the highest order, because we've heard it before and still the U.S. continues. But Moore also uses footage of life during the Eisenhower years and old-time documentaries about life in the U.S. to draw further attention to how much things have changed . . . and not for the better.

He tells of the story of a system that has pendulum swings between labor and management, and those swings back and forth manage to achieve some sort of balance. Now, however, the pendulum is broken, and, according to Moore (and all of the historians and experts he quotes), the big swing that started us on the path we're on began with the election of Ronald Reagan. One of the most telling moments comes when President Reagan is in the midst of a news conference and his chief of staff Don Regan leans over and tells him, "You'll have to hurry it up." Moore's mock-incredulous voiceover says, "Hurry up? Who tells the President to hurry up?" The man who's behind the Reaganomics policies, that's who. Regan, who was Merrill Lynch's chairman at the time Reagan tapped him to serve as Treasury Secretary. And then suddenly Regan ended up switching positions with White House Chief of Staff James Baker. Apparently Treasury Secretary wasn't the right position to influence the president and policy.

I know, I know. Readers who buy into Trickle-down economics are still thinking the system worked beautifully, because that's what they've been told by the conservative side--though Nobel Prize-winning economists have since been in near-unanimous agreement that it was a complete failure. But one of Moore's theses in "Capitalism" is that those who have extreme wealth exert extreme influence over our political system, with the goal of enacting legislation that will help them accumulate even more wealth. Moore laments the system that "worked" in earlier decades when so-called captains of industry were taxed sufficiently so that the U.S. could grow along with the corporations--the money put back into infrastructure and education and hospitals. He also suggests that the very rich had more of a social conscience. Carnegie Steel money helped pay for Carnegie libraries and universities, for example. But what we get now are corporations driven by the profit factor. Is it more profitable to outsource? Then do it. Is it more profitable to lay off 1000 employees and ask the other 3500 to pick up the slack? Then do it. Moore provides a number of case studies and examples to illustrate this.

We see a "condo vulture" who swoops down when he sees an area that looks ripe for repossession and then gets into position to buy the properties and flip them for a profit for investors, for example.

But the most odious practices that Moore exposes are what he calls "dead peasant insurance" and "derivatives"--both of them ways that corporations can profit by other common people's misfortune. I personally did not know of either of these practices until I watched Moore's film, and he offers not just his usual research but plenty of case studies and interviews with experts that both confirm and try to explain each to him. With dead peasant insurance, it turns out that corporations like Wal-Mart actually take out life insurance policies on some employees (whose death would pay the biggest benefits) and then actually profit from an employee's untimely death. Moore sits down with a family that experienced this--one that was in debt for hospital and burial costs-while the corporation walked away with a million and a half. This was recorded as a corporate profit, and nothing at all was offered to the family. It had nothing to do with the family, and everything to do with an investment that "paid off." With derivatives, mathematical programs chart people who might be at risk to default on their mortgages and then corporations bet on the default, again in order to make money. It's a win-win situation . . . for the bank, who wins if the high-interest mortgage is paid, or via big insurance payoff if it's not. And the loser? It's the consumer, again, and Moore holes up with three different mortgage default homeowners right before they lose their homes to bank takeover.

As a film, "Capitalism" packs a punch and emerges as one of Moore's finest. But Moore is anything but objective. He rants, he howls, he's a Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsburg with a 35mm cameraman following him around. That's Moore, and you're either going to love him or hate him. As a film, "Capitalism" sags somewhat during overlong sections when the camera lingers on crying and emotional victims of the system. But it succeeds in its ironic juxtapositions and in its presentation of new evidence to indict the ultra-rich and corporations who continue to prosper in a down economy. But of course my saying this only makes me another fellow who's saying that the Emperor has no clothes. A lot of people out there will think that I'm just another Chicken Little for believing the evidence. Michael & Me.

For a different take, but the same final score, check out Tim David Raynor's theatrical review.

Video:
"Capitalism: A Love Story" varies in quality because it uses so much vintage footage, both black-and-white and color, and so much of it is shot in the field. But overall there's a minimal amount of grain, strong, true-looking colors, and a decent amount of detail for a DVD. "Capitalism," rated R (for Moore's F-bombs), is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen.

Audio:
The audio is probably overkill, given that "Capitalism" is dialogue/voiceover driven and that the vintage film clips were originally in mono, but like the video it's a solid presentation. No distortion, no tinny sound on the highs, and nothing terribly robust on the low end. Just a decent audio for a "talkie." Subtitles are in English and Spanish.

Extras:
The bonus features are really 80 minutes of outtakes given segment titles. Included are: "Sorry, House-Flippers and Banks--You're Toast in Flint, MI," "Congressman Cummings Dares to Speak the Unspeakable," "The Omnivore's Dilemma? It's Capitalism," "The Rich Don't Go to Heaven (There's a Special Place Reserved for Them!)," "How to Run the Place Where You Work," "Commie Taxi Drivers--"You Talking to Me?--in Wisconsin," "What if, Just if, We had Listened to Jimmy Carter in 1979?" "The Socialist Bank of--North Dakota?" "The Banks Kick Them OIut, Max Kicks Them Back In," "NY Times Pulitzer Prize Winner Chris Hedges on the Killing Machine Known as Capitalism."

Check out the Exclusive Interview with Michael Moore that DVD Town did via Skype, with video of Moore.

Bottom Line:
I don't know that it's possible for anyone to have an open mind anymore in America when it comes to political issues, but if you approach "Capitalism: A Love Story" with some neutrality you'll come away with knowledge that you didn't have before--at least on some level. And no matter what your better judgment tells you, a feeling deep inside will confirm it. "Capitalism: A Love Story" is an entertaining and illuminating indictment of big business and the system that keeps so many Americans down and out.