Director: Michael Moore.

Screenwriter: Michael Moore

It’s hard not to feel a little sorry for Michael Moore (cue: disquiet and confused stares.) For all his earnestness, he’s become the poster boy for an amorphous protest movement that is quick with relish but short on the detail. Moore finds himself a minor celebrity- a position which must sit uncomfortably with the supposedly egalitarian politics he espouses, but also of no surprise: Throughout his recent filmmaking, Moore has sought to put himself in the front line. His films aren’t ‘conventional documentaries’ where the filmmaker is but an invisible hand, rather Moore’s films so consciously allow him a presence as to render his household name status as more of a planned career aim. Perhaps that’s cynical, but for better or worse his films have become common knowledge: even if one hasn’t seen Bowling For Columbine, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who couldn’t tell you which on side of the political fence Moore sits. This has arguably had its benefits (publicising an oft-marginalised political discourse) but equally, has not come without significant cost. Audiences will dismiss a Michael Moore film without a second thought due to the very notion of being so overtly preached at, coupled with the perceived factual inaccuracies of previous efforts. Moore’s well-documented (no pun intended) selective myopia with regards to ‘the facts’ has even spurned a ‘retort documentary’, Rick Kane and Debbie Melynyk’s cleverly titled Manufacturing Dissent, which, ironically, was littered with as many errors as it accused Moore of.

With Capitalism: A Love Story Moore is taking his broadest shot yet. Whereas previous films have aimed with specificity, Capitalism, well, you can infer its subject from the title. It’s a brave move – economics is hardly the world’s most invigorating of conversation starters – and Capitalism is by some distance his most affecting film of recent history. Previous endeavours have focused on dividing the audience along partisan lines but here the inescapable truth is that the financial crisis hasn’t discriminated. Recent events have so ordained that we’re all affected (whether we know the difference between GDP and GNP or not). Regardless of racial, ethnic, political or religious groupings, whether you supported Iraq or stood against it, or if you believed in earnest that some goth metal entertainer invoked Columbine, recent economics hasn’t taken such trivialities into consideration. It’s this very sense of far-reaching, bipartisan injustice that drives Moore’s latest. For once, it’s as if he’s speaking for people rather than at them.

Opening with the philosophical preponderance, “What defines us?” and then seeking to demystify the myths of capitalism throughout both historical and contemporary example, it’s a more basic approach than has been undertaken with earlier work but is no less polemical for it. We have the standard cocktail of investigative journalism, archive footage, interview material and stunt, with Moore seeking throughout to play ‘how things should be,’ against, ‘how they are’. There’s the standard trope of letting a specific person act as telling of the whole and Moore continues to let his interviewee’s cry first before getting into the depth of the argument but regardless of this, the film’s most successful moments should make you livid. We meet a former employee of Walmart who left in acrimonious circumstances when his former employer cashed a secret life insurance cheque after the death of his co-worker wife, a asthma sufferer. This shocking practice, referred to openly (if not affectionately) as ‘dead peasant insurance policies’ is apparently not uncommon these days.

Equally, the leaked memo from banking conglomerate Citigroup which states that the US can now be considered a ‘plutonomy’ (a society in which the majority of wealth is generated and consumed by the top 1%) displays an unsurprisingly elitist, and contentedly so, world-view. Moore uses these and other powerful examples to expose the fallacies in the free-market dogma that all shall benefit from competition and that such economic systems benefit society as a whole. But the most harrowing moments of the film come from his scrutiny of the $700 billion bail bailout orchestrated by perennial blame-figure Dubya and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Through interviews with members of Congress and impassioned footage from the chamber itself, the entire act is presented as a financial cout d’etat, the biggest in history no less, and it’s an argument given credence when Moore asks the senator in charge of accounting for the bailout where she believes the money has gone to. After a lengthy pause, she admits to simply not knowing. A staggering moment for sure, but one only compounded when you read in the fine print that no accountability was demanded by Congress and review by a judiciary expressly prohibited. Furthermore, in drafting the legislation- Paulson (himself a former Goldman Sachs CEO) makes explicit his exemption from possibility of prosecution.

But while these moments may (perhaps should) evoke some small protest spirit within the audience, the film is equally riddled with flaws. In many regards, ‘good documentary’ (like a blog you return to) happens when the topics are specific. There is the realised fear in Capitalism: A Love Story that Moore has bitten off more than he can chew- or more than could be dealt with reasonably in the film’s already-overlong 127 minutes. The narrative is scattershot and flits between the bail-out, the wages of airline pilots, the marginalisation of unions, world economics, George Bush (he gives Obama the easiest of rides), ‘good honest folk’ being evicted, the ever widening disparity between rich and poor, advocating socialism and it wouldn’t be a Michael Moore film without a trip to Flint, Michigan.

Yet again, Moore strives to paint Flint as some microcosm for America’s economic woes, articulating Flint’s decline as endemic. Similarly, the moments where Moore takes centre stage prove the most trying, both in their placement and execution. After the exasperating details of the bailout are just settling in, the film cuts to a tongue-in-cheek action scene in which Moore is seen driving a security van to the banks, cornering them off with police ‘crime scene’ tape and, with a megaphone, somewhat impotently asking for ‘our money back’. It’s an unnecessary visual gag- the point of injustice having already been made. But Moore’s earnestness, or ambition, necessitates that he indulges in the grandiose and entirely set-up faux-theatre performances. There’s a decent argument to be had about the legitimacy of sourcing protest movements as entertainment, or rather providing entertainment through protesting, but the overriding tone of this film is one that is deeply unfunny. Indeed, Moore forgoes the cartoons of previous films entirely and if there are jokes to be had in this doc, they’re financial, and they’re most definitely on us.

Early in the film, Moore narrates that when asked as a child, he stated that he wanted to grow up and get into the church, become a priest. Not for the fancy garb, he says, but for the community role they play. Conversely, a preacher is exactly what Michael Moore is. For even when the weight and substance of his arguments are irrefutable, he still allows room for theatrical showboating and reminding the audience just who is making the case. Sadly, it is this, not the manipulative tone he takes in presenting said arguments (he never claimed to be objective), that is his most valid criticism. Which is a shame because by rights, this film should be a call to arms. We’ve been collectively duped, yet Moore can’t just let the facts speak for themselves.

By Amir Adhamy

Capitalism: A Love Story is released 26^th February by Paramount.