Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)

Director-screenwriter: Michael Moore
Production company: Dog Eat Dog Films
Sales: Paramount Vantage

Producers: Michael Moore, Anne Moore
Director of photography: Dan Marracino, Jayme Ro
Music: Jeff Gibbs
Editors: Conor O'Neill, John Walter

A little bit late after the crisis' peek has already passed, Michael Moore's movie entitled “Capitalism: A Love Story” portrays the failures of capitalism in US specifically, and what this trend has done to US inhabitants.

Well, some love it, some don't. I dare to say that most who love the movie, don't really understand capitalism. Capitalism, per se, is just an economical way of running things, people or individuals who act or make decisions and then claim “that's just the way things go in capitalism” are the ones who bend the system. Otherwise, no one can reasonably agree with Moore's ending that somehow states that democracy could be the opposite of capitalism. Let's get things straight Mr. Moore, capitalism, meaning free market, people getting to buy or sell whatever they want, right to property, you know, all that useless stuff people lacked in communism, is the underlying structure of democracy. If Moore had just sticked with the facts, and left out self indulgent remarks and tear jerking scenes, I think this movie might have gotten some credit. Either way, maybe it's not all lost...

There is some truth to this movie. Regardless of the fact that Moore's sources are cited as in those shady contracts where you don't really know how much you get, meaning in small fonts at the bottom of the screen, scenes where Moore has direct contact with bank members, who, of course, are seen as the agents of evil on earth. The actual problem that Moore points out would be that of corporate America, and not capitalism. How big companies lobby their way out of the financial crisis, and how they influence policy making into bending their way.

The viewer's sympathy is called into action when Moore appeals to socialism as a “counter measure” to capitalism (a bit more than stretched reality, but we'll go with it for now). He interviews people that have suffered the consequences of ill economical practices, from commercial airline pilots that live on food stamps, to couples that are on the verge of losing their homes.

Although he overly simplifies things, as in the majority of his documentaries, he manages to attract and retain the viewer's attention for almost 2 hours by contrasting a fast-paced montage of the fifties archive images picturing free enterprise with today's financial disaster.

The last part of the movie deals with even more worrying matters, as Moore interviews members of the Congress which express fear over the $700 billion bailout plan implemented by the former presidency and which was thought of as being a financial engineered bank robbery, allegedly planned by Goldman Sachs and Henry Paulson. Although everyone in the political area is to blame for the financial crisis and for accepting the bailout plan, Moore attentively ignore President Barack Obama, who is still seen as a hope for a better future. Viewers have to see how his support for a number of workers who have problems with their factory is compared to Franklin D. Roosevelt's support for a new bill of rights that should have included universal health care, but which was, unfortunately, never implemented.

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