That a Michael Moore movie released in 2009 seems kind of irrelevant is a telling commentary on the arc of American liberalism over the past decade or so. In the late ‘90s, when Moore was well-known enough to have his own (short-lived) television program on cable network Bravo but anonymous enough that he could play out his candid camera stunts while remaining unrecognisable to his targets, he was a guerrilla figurehead for the Naderite left. After eight years of Clinton triangulation and post-Cold War prosperity, Michael Moore raged against the machine in exactly the way wanted by liberals who felt unheard in a political landscape they saw as being dominated by two indistinguishable parties. And after George W. Bush won the 2000 election, 9/11 hit, and the War on Terrorism began, Moore’s rage and indignation provided a focal point for these people who had suddenly realised there was a bigger difference between Democrats and Republicans than they had once thought.
And so the left got organised. They started blogs and created organisations like Move On. They found cogent spokespeople who had better arguments and smarter ideas than the blustering Moore. They found issues the wider American public agreed with them about, like the necessity of health care reform and the futility of the war in Iraq. And they found candidates they could support and be happy about sending to Washington. Howard Dean was a trial run, and a failure, but by the time Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton faced off for the Democratic Presidential nomination, the left was calling the shots and picking Presidents. Michael Moore released a movie, Sicko in 2007 but there didn’t seem to be much of a reason for it to exist: Why did America need a scrappy documentary filmmaker to tell it how terrible its health care system was when its Presidential candidates were about to start saying exactly the same thing in campaign stops and televised debates?
Capitalism means never having to say you’re sorry.
Capitalism: A Love Story, released last month in the U.S., and November 5th here, had the potential to be Moore’s rampaging return to relevance. A populist wave of anger at Wall Street, from both the left and the right, fuelled by the recession, is sweeping America, and Barack Obama has seemed to be far too hesitant to take on the big financial institutions and implement the necessary financial reforms to the economy. That Moore is on roughly the same page as Glenn Beck shows that this rage is not restricted to any particular side of the political spectrum.
Has Moore reignited his spark and captured the zeitgeist?
No. For a man supposed to be a political satirist, it’s bad news that the funniest line in the film belongs to a Wall Street suit, who, when accosted by Moore in the street and asked if he has any advice for the filmmaker, suggests, “Don’t make any more movies.” (Moore then goes in hunt of someone “not a film critic.” Ha.)
The main problem with Capitalism: A Love Story, apart from its not being particularly funny, is that Moore is ill-equipped to make any kind of argument about the state of the American economy. His basic premise is that Democracy and Capitalism are opposing ideologies, and since the days of Ronald Reagan, using a combination of amoral trickery and barefaced corruption, the rich have wrenched America from the former to the latter. That’s unconvincing on the face of it; true, the shift rightward America has taken since the Reagan era has increased income disparity and reconfigured the balance of government and private investment in America’s mixed economy, but America was a capitalist country under Truman, and a democracy under Reagan. And even if he does have a point worth making, Moore can’t, or won’t look at the economics to bolster his theory.
Moore’s best film is Bowling for Columbine, and you don’t even need to agree with him to see why. His greatest talent is his ability to find regular Americans and put a camera in front of them. Columbine didn’t have much in the way of arguments to make about guns in America — it spends little time advocating gun control for instance — but it does provide a fascinating glimpse of American gun culture. Whether you thought Moore’s presentation was insightful and incisive or biased, unfair and dishonest, by merely going amongst the Americans who shot guns and got shot by guns, Moore presented a fascinating document of one of his country’s most idiosyncratic qualities.
The few parts of Capitalism that do succeed are those in which Moore abandons economics and talks to actual Americans. An engaging narrative about the sacked workers of a bankrupt Chicago factory who stage a sit-down strike to get benefits owed to them is a worthy and engrossing story about the effect the Global Financial Crisis has had on working people. Less successful is a segment chronicling the eviction of a North Carolinian family who refinanced their home with a subprime mortgage, losing a property that has been in their family for decades. Their anger and pain is revelatory, and their situation is without doubt miserable, but Moore’s desire to martyr them means he doesn’t ask the obvious question: Why on earth did they think it was a good idea to borrow so excessively against the equity of a home they owned outright?
The most dismal part, though, is Moore’s take on the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the emergency legislation passed by Congress last year to bail out teetering financial institutions. He takes the populist line that this was an outrageous grab of public funds to serve the needs of the rich and reckless — which isn’t exactly wrong per se, but Moore doesn’t quite seem to grasp that “too big to fail” means failure is not an option, as terrible as it was to allow banks to reach that state. He actually applauds the reckless intransigence of the House members who rejected the first TARP bill, allowing the American economy to teeter on the precipice for a couple days more than it had to.
The failure of Capitalism is best illustrated by its treatment of two men: Barack Obama and Michael Moore. Moore is everywhere in this film, far more than he has been in his previous works. Where once he was a stand in for the audience, he’s now better known than most of the other people on screen, and the effect is dull and indulgent. We get an interview with Moore’s father, home videos of a young Moore, chats with Moore’s priest, and so what was once a personable narrative device becomes a crutch.
Obama hangs heavy over the film through his absence. Moore spends a lot of time critiquing George W. Bush, and it feels as if the filmmaker hasn’t realised it’s been almost an entire year since Bush left office. When Obama does finally make an appearance, Moore greets him as a saviour, and oddly refuses to criticise him. There is no mention of Obama’s support for T.A.R.P., no consideration of his far less sound bailout of the auto companies, and no criticism of his tardiness in introducing financial reforms. Capitalism is a muddled picture, but Moore’s embrace of Obama is strangely simple.
The Screw 