November 2009 / vol. 6 issue 3
| Tiny violins play sad, sad songs for the people in Moore's new film. Illustration by richard badgett |
Capitalism: A Sob Story
Michael Moore fails to capitalize on opportunity
Capitalism: A Love Story, the latest offering from oft controversial, baseball-cap-wearing documentarian Michael Moore, opens with a new modern vignette: the hard-working, middle-American, blue-collar Joe who has fallen upon hard times. He has fallen prey to predatory lending practices, and as a result his home is currently under foreclosure. It is a sad tale, to be sure, and Moore’s capitalization on pathos — which has become a hallmark of his filmmaking — does not disappoint. In fact, the first hour of the film is little more than a continuous battery on the sympathies of the audience.
Excessive emotional appeal is not the culmination of Moore’s abuse of documentary integrity. Throughout the film, correlation is used to imply causation with a complete disregard for rationale that approaches recklessness. For example, President Ronald Reagan’s rise to power and the increase in bankruptcy, credit card debt, and the volume of anti-depressant prescriptions are presented in parallel, as if the former implied the latter.
Without any attempt to support his results quantitatively, aside from a snappy time graph with Reagan’s mug in the corner, Moore manages to attribute what he asserts to be the perversion of capitalism to rising corporate greed and tax cuts since Reagan came into power.
Moore also attempts to argue that democracy is a viable alternative to capitalism. Effectively, Moore provides an irrelevant solution for a problem whose existence is never quite proven.
That is partially the fault of the director’s adherence to a practically indefensible thesis and partially because the defense of his thesis is weak and filled with logical connections that don’t fit. Moore’s whole argument is based on presuming that corporations are evil and interested solely in conducting evil policies to cultivate wealth through out-of-control greed.
The unfortunate fact is that those faults, tricks, and huckster’s compromises serve to detract from the later, more important points that Moore makes, which he actually makes well. For whatever reason, as is symptomatic of most of his previous works, Moore always falls back upon old standards of cheap debate.
Ideologues on either political side pander to the lowest common denominator in order to attract support from those with opinions on the fringe. It is necessary to state, outright, that Michael Moore’s firebrand filmmaking is no different.
If one is able to suffer through the saccharine sympathy that composes the first half of the film and can look past the leaps of logic and radical claims, a reward awaits. A surprisingly robust and well-made thirty or forty-five minutes of the film focus on the 2008 federal bailout of the financial industry.
On that foundation a better film could have, and should have, been built. Moore presents the facts in a straightforward way and provides an interesting look into the frantic course of events. He highlights how major players from investment banks helped shape the legislation to suit their needs and realize their desired outcomes.
The speeches from members of Congress highlight a frustration, often overlooked by the news media, that resonates with the public at large.
What is most notable is that, instead of trying to dumb things down, Moore gives his audience access to as much of the story as is required to form their own opinions. Moreover, the facts are interesting and engaging and present information that many may have missed in the mess surrounding the economy’s collapse.
Americans need to have an opinion on this issue, and Moore provides a way for people to develop informed opinions.
It is tragic to imagine what the film could have been. Had Moore been able to shelve the sensationalism and realize that the situation demanded directorial restraint, the final product would have been far more relevant.
Buried under the relentless pathos is a great film about one of the most important and divisive issues in recent history, an issue that has yet to receive sufficient investigative treatment. Moore had the opportunity to provide that treatment and failed.
Essentially, Moore’s intent, as is generally true of his larger body of work, is to reduce complex issues to simple moral evaluations in an effort to make his thesis more palatable at the box office.
Moore ends the movie with a plea to the like-minded to join him in his fight against the injustices he attributes to capitalism. He seems sincere in this request, but ultimately it does not resonate.
So much has been sacrificed to force a moral imperative on the issue that little integrity remains for such a high minded appeal. The fact is that Michael Moore will never make an important film unless he realizes that doing so will require more respect for the intelligence of the audience. 
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