Movie Review: Capitalism: A Love Story

First a few words on seeing this film in the theater. Laurie and I have seen four movies in the theater in the three years we've been together. We don't go to movie theaters, and we have what we feel are very good reasons for that. This was a special case as it's timely (in fact likely to be dated fairly quickly), plus we like to cast our economic vote for more films like this being made (and possibly less being made like the ones we saw previews for) and we had eight bucks left on two year old movie theater gift cards.

When we walked in there was the cognitive dissonance of the preview for Disney's A Christmas Carol. As you well remember, Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol as a tract denouncing the corrupt business practices of his day. Now it's going to be Disney's seasonal millions maker. In a way, it was both fitting and abominable. Coupled with that, I was grossly insulted by every one of the previews for upcoming films. Also, one of the strangest parts, which I'd forgotten, of seeing a Michael Moore film (and this one in particular) in the theater is the experience of having people around me laughing uproariously at parts when I am earnestly weeping. Mind you, they are laughing in solidarity to the points being made, but still. In this case it was the people behind us who looked like college kids with wealthy parents. Long may they still be able to laugh about such things. I cried most of the way through the film.

I waited until the end of my last post to trot out the Roman Empire. Michael Moore started with it. As usual, I won't go into great specific detail as you should all go experience it for yourself. The film discusses a dozen or so aspects of the economic mess we're in. In fact, I would almost say in one of my few critiques of the film that he may have bitten off a way bigger topic than two hours can do justice. However, I think both Laurie and I benefited greatly from having heard this interview last week before seeing the film. I thought it laid a groundwork for those who see the film. I would encourage you to listen to the interview and then see it for yourself regardless of your preconceptions, whatever they may be.

I thought he was very honest and fair in his pinning of responsibility on both political parties and more specifically to the bankers who pull their strings. There are graphic foreclosures and accounts of deaths, lay-offs and factory closings, in sum, grotesque business practices. I thought he did a very good job and spent a very good amount of time on the "why" of it. He introduced us to some of the more lugubrious members of our government and banking systems. He explained de-regulation and how we came to such a point of unfettered grief to where, as he puts it, all of America is turning into Flint, Michigan.

I especially appreciated the portions where he appealed to religion, mainly because I found it refreshing to hear Christianity regarded in a positive light rather than the mustache twirling villains we're so often cast as in modern Hollywood. Although I did notice he seemed to talk mainly to Catholics, I have to whole-heartedly agree with their assessment of contemporary American capitalism and Christianity.

I heard a film review before going to see it where the reviewer said that a few of the scenes seemed opportunistic to him. For example, when someone is honestly crying and the camera is eating it up. I disagree. The purpose of the film is to speak on the topic, and in order to do so Moore talks to people affected by the problem. It wouldn't be the film that it is, nor would it be very honest if it didn't include the stories of those who have been hurt. I thought Moore handled those situations very tactfully with great respect for the people suffering. People get really weird about Michael Moore. I don't think he's a god among men or anything, but people seem to try to get their negativity around whatever they can possibly think of in regards to him. I don't know. I get that he is famous and wealthy and all that while he says these things, but that's just it! How many other rich and famous people are devoting their careers to these topics?!!?

Some of Moore's gimmicks, like trying to get the money back from the banks or attempting to citizen's arrest CEOs, I personally feel are some of the weaker points, a sort of gratuitous comedy, but they also illustrate a larger problem in my mind. They are a bit like The Porter Scene in Macbeth, where if you didn't have the comic relief it would be hours of nothing but grim. But they also remind me of something New York Rob used to say to me. He said he wishes there was a building somewhere with "The Establishment" in big lighted letters on top so you could, you know, go pee on that building or throw eggs at it or something. Moore can go to a building and his very presence will make people nervous. Not so with me or you. I don't know any CEOs of major banks, and if I try to call them they will not panic. They will simply disregard me.

Also, a scene where workers staged a sit-down strike for their wages at their factory which was closing made me think, "Well, that's all well and good, they got their severance pay, but where are those people going to find jobs when this is over and their $6000 has run out?"
If I were making the film, rather than the revolutionary rhetoric, I would have focused a bit more on a point he makes in passing toward the beginning which is that all votes are created equal. That's part of the beauty of democracy.

As I said in a previous post, Capitalism is not the American System. Democracy is. Moore saves what was to me the big guns for the end of the film. He reminded me of something I knew, a certain great political figure in American history who proposed a second bill of rights, seeing America for the great country it is, which included jobs and health care for all. Then he died. We're still working on what he proposed about 60 years ago. I'd forgotten all about it and was glad that Moore mentioned it.

I would recommend the film to anyone. It's a well made op-ed piece on what may end up being the biggest issue of our day. How we deal with the economic mess will probably define this period of history. Although, if you've never seen a Michael Moore film before, first of all, you should see one. There's a reason why he's one of the world's most respected documentary film makers alive. But personally I would recommend Sicko before this one. I thought it was a much more concise film - no matter how glad I was to see Wallace Shawn in this one.

Covering Capitalism

Many years ago, when Laurie was just a friend of mine, one evening at a study she told me a story about when she was a teenager and they unplugged a jukebox at a camp because the kids kept playing "One Tin Soldier" over and over and over. She was amazed that I had never heard One Tin Soldier. I think later that night I drove down for one of my Orange Country trips (which I used to do when I was single - leave to drive to OC at 9pm and get there just before sunrise.) Within 24 hours I was at a friends house and asking them about One Tin Soldier. It turned out everyone else on Earth had heard the song before, but I got the strange idea in my head that I should record a cover of the song, never having heard it before, of what I might suppose it might go like. I envisioned a whole album of covers of songs I'd never heard. My version was highly percussive and had a lot to do with Red Buttons making time go slow and Jonathan Winters' head rising like the sun.

I'm about to do something similar and, probably, about to finally write the post that will make everyone furious with me. Deo Volente, Laurie and I are spending the last of our movie theater gift certificates tomorrow to go see Michael Moore's new film "Capitalism: A Love Story." I thought I might say a few words here in the autumn of 2009 just before seeing the film; and then after seeing the film I can write a review and see what the two entries look like next to one another.

I've enjoyed some of Moore's films and I would direct you to my recent post of separating art from artist. I thought Sicko hit the nail right on the head; and I cried most of the way through Bowling For Columbine. And when I disagree with him, he at least gets us thinking and talking about why, which I think is always good. In the end, I like his op-ed pieces. I take them as op-ed pieces, (not as journalism) regardless of what I think of him or how much or little I agree with them. At the very least, I think he puts on a good show and sparks some nifty conversations. And sometimes he hits it hard and he hits it exactly on the head.

Now, to Capitalism as an economic system. Here's a clip of Senator Sanders responding to a question by Michael Moore:



I don't think Capitalism is necessarily a great evil in and of itself. Like Moore, I understand that it is not by necessity the American Way. Democracy is The American Way. We can have whatever economic system we choose. I have no problem with rewarding good production and hard work. In fact, I would like to see that.

It's always puzzled me how a first world country, born from The Enlightenment, can have people who die of heart attacks because they don't call the ambulance because their family could not afford the medical bills. Or how there can be people, like me, who desperately want to work, when clearly there is an abundance of work that could be done to build our nation, but are unable to find work because no one is hiring. Or that people who want to work lose their houses and cannot afford food. Meanwhile, the top 1% gets a new, bigger flatscreen iTV. I'm inclined, with Senator Sanders, to agree that a lot of Europe seems to put us to shame. Not that I think Europe is some Utopia by any means. Also, upon consideration of the temperature set by television's screaming heads, I should probably add that I love my country.

It would seem to me that our country could be a hot-bed of progress, innovation, ideas, culture, and philanthropy. At the moment, I think we're slouching toward the polar opposite. There could be jobs for all! When I took a business leadership course in college (I think I was planning on using the concepts in stage management) I did a report on Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream and their corporate structure, which includes taking scrupulous, almost Nordic, care of their employees, and the CEOs not making more than seven times what their lowest employees was paid (I say "was" because they eventually ended up having to sell the whole company to Hagen Das in one of the more depressing bits of business news of the last 20 years.)

I'm not here for an anti-capitalism rant. I do think capitalism can be a good incentive system. I think that people striving for better stuff is fine, so long as one's not glutting while someone else willing to work, unable to find work, is outside starving, sick without means for medical care and being foreclosed upon. And so long as the people who are doing the work that deserves the rewards are getting the rewards, but that is so very rarely the case. Unfortunately, unfettered capitalism seems to have led to a sort of Social Darwinistic economy where the "fittest" are either:
1) those born to rich parents;
2) those so brutal, amoral, and backstabbing that they politic, coerce, and destroy their way to the top or;
3) the kind of entertainer or athlete that advertisers and corporations feel okay backing because they do nothing to disrupt the culture of consumption.

I am achingly aware that money does not really exist. It is merely an agreed upon idea. However, as most of you who have reached adulthood have probably noticed, even in America you can die from a lack of agreed upon ideas.

So, as with Twitter, I don't think Capitalism is in and of itself evil, but the people who wield it often are. The way we use it often is. The top feeders in modern America seem to have come from the Charles Dickens Villain School of Business and Economics. The recent bank bailout debacle serves to illustrate again that people are not inclined to do the right thing.

Yesterday, I had a whole post on Classicism worked out in my head until I took the dogs out and a truck drove by. The truck was playing music of a man screaming as though he were about to kill people and the discordant cacophony behind his vocals were tailored to a pace to mimic a heart that is about to explode in panic. I thought about how things are getting kind of bad around here, and are in fact getting kind of bad all over the place. I don't come from a great golden age of decency. I am a child of the '80s. But I can say that things did not used to be as bad in America as they are now. People did not behave in the manner they now behave. Entropy ravages our closed system. And I started thinking about the murderous, vile, selfish hearts of humanity. But, 'twas ever thus. The murder in the hearts of those walking around, the selfishness and hatred, could be a fitting description of the days of Noah, or of the men of the city that Lot and his family fled in Genesis.

My brother brought up this morning in conversation how the church should take care of its own. I agree! Last night Laurie was asking me if I regretted that I don't have money and travel; and I said words to this effect: "Laurie, I am a man with a lot of regrets from his time in this world thus far. That is not one of them. I am very smart and could have sought after money and travel. But what is this world to me? Without Christ's abundant grace, I have nothing."
And again I would point out that we can talk about economics until doomsday, but a world without Christ is going to be wicked and sinful. A world without Christ has no hope. Without Christ, all is worthless.

I would also point out that the Bible doesn't command me to endorse a particular mode of government or economic structure.

But don't let's just tear down. When the economy collapsed, I thought it seemed like a very good time to re-organize, re-think, and re-structure. The video below is an interview (it's about 15 minutes long, but way better than whatever you were going to do with those 15 minutes anyway) with Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglizt about the gross mishandling of the banking crisis, how the economy really looks now, and some archaic aspects of our current economic structure (although I was laid off from a business with the 19th century mode of ownership that he was talking about. The dis-unity is a bit of a problem too, especially when you have 19th century style businesses competing with slick 21st century structured businesses and then wondering why they're having so much trouble.) To those already made politically uneasy by some of what I'm saying, I would point out that Stiglitz criticized Obama just as much as Bush. (Lately I've been using the word Carter-esque way more than I ever hoped to use it again in my life.) I thought it was a fair and thought provoking analysis of the current economic situation, which included some solutions which I don't think even went far enough and won't happen anyway. But, I thought I would pass it on.



You know, this is such a wonderful country. I love this country dearly. So much so that I think it would be an enormous tragedy to see it fall over something so stupid as the mismanagement of the economy. We wouldn't be the first to fall in such a way. The Roman Empire had a more dignified death.