Capitalism means never having to say you're sorry
Quote stolen from Ebert's review of Michael Moore's latest spectacle film, dealing with, in his mix of political polemic, first-person stories and personal grandstanding, the root of all evil the current economic crisis with an American slant.
The best parts of the movie are when Moore lets his interviewees tell their own stories, especially when the facts are horrifying powerful enough to transcend the cheesy BGM and presentation. Examples:
- Companies benefiting from life insurance policies - apparently referred to in internal memos as "Dead Peasant Insurance" (though the impact of this was slightly undermined by personally perceived resemblance of the whistle-blowing lawyer "Michael D Myers" (sp?) to actor of same name) - taken out on their employees without their/families' knowledge.
- The PA Child Care centres in Philadelphia, privately-run juvenile detention facilities whose funding (from the county) was apparently pegged to the number of teenagers held there and the duration of the custody, leading to the expected rise in the number of adolescents convicted (for such gross offences as putting up an anti-teacher Facebook page, throwing a steak at mother's boyfriend and quarrelling with a friend in a mall) and incarcerated for periods up to three times the length of the original sentence.
- "Condo Vultures", a realty firm (which exists on Google) specializing in finding foreclosed houses to sell for slightly less than market price in Miami.
- Most of the US Treasury being run by former head honchos of Goldman Sachs.
- Derivatives and everything derived thereof, including the failure of a Harvard-educated engineer (one of the engineers of the concept of derivatives) to explain what exactly they were. The equation representing one of these financial instruments looked like spliced-together GCE "A" level statistics, differential calculus and vector mechanics tutorial questions.
- An evicted family being paid (less than the market rate) by the bank to clean up and clear out old furniture and garbage from their own home.
- A senator exhorting her constituents to "squat" in their homes if threatened with foreclosure, because the bank would not be able to produce evidence of their mortgage.
More tiresome were Moore's repeated (and repetitive) efforts to obtain face-to-face interviews with the usual suspects Goldman Sachs and General Motors CEOs, the obligatory Republican-bashing (though he does note that Democrats "made deals" in return for Obama campaign contributions), driving to the Treasury to demand taxpayers' bailout money back (in a sack) with a bullhorn, and in the concluding scenes, running a "Crime Scene: Do Not Cross" yellow tape along the length of Wall Street, to the amusement of tourists.
One voice, in footage discovered by Moore 65 years after it was believed "lost", spoke clearer (if not louder) than him - President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his last State of the Union address, of a Second Bill of Rights which would guarantee, among other things, a job with a "living wage", a home, medical care, and education. One wonders if Moore will make a movie about the last after having covered the others (q.v. Roger & Me and Sicko).
The best parts of the movie are when Moore lets his interviewees tell their own stories, especially when the facts are horrifying powerful enough to transcend the cheesy BGM and presentation. Examples:
- Companies benefiting from life insurance policies - apparently referred to in internal memos as "Dead Peasant Insurance" (though the impact of this was slightly undermined by personally perceived resemblance of the whistle-blowing lawyer "Michael D Myers" (sp?) to actor of same name) - taken out on their employees without their/families' knowledge.
- The PA Child Care centres in Philadelphia, privately-run juvenile detention facilities whose funding (from the county) was apparently pegged to the number of teenagers held there and the duration of the custody, leading to the expected rise in the number of adolescents convicted (for such gross offences as putting up an anti-teacher Facebook page, throwing a steak at mother's boyfriend and quarrelling with a friend in a mall) and incarcerated for periods up to three times the length of the original sentence.
- "Condo Vultures", a realty firm (which exists on Google) specializing in finding foreclosed houses to sell for slightly less than market price in Miami.
- Most of the US Treasury being run by former head honchos of Goldman Sachs.
- Derivatives and everything derived thereof, including the failure of a Harvard-educated engineer (one of the engineers of the concept of derivatives) to explain what exactly they were. The equation representing one of these financial instruments looked like spliced-together GCE "A" level statistics, differential calculus and vector mechanics tutorial questions.
- An evicted family being paid (less than the market rate) by the bank to clean up and clear out old furniture and garbage from their own home.
- A senator exhorting her constituents to "squat" in their homes if threatened with foreclosure, because the bank would not be able to produce evidence of their mortgage.
More tiresome were Moore's repeated (and repetitive) efforts to obtain face-to-face interviews with the usual suspects Goldman Sachs and General Motors CEOs, the obligatory Republican-bashing (though he does note that Democrats "made deals" in return for Obama campaign contributions), driving to the Treasury to demand taxpayers' bailout money back (in a sack) with a bullhorn, and in the concluding scenes, running a "Crime Scene: Do Not Cross" yellow tape along the length of Wall Street, to the amusement of tourists.
One voice, in footage discovered by Moore 65 years after it was believed "lost", spoke clearer (if not louder) than him - President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his last State of the Union address, of a Second Bill of Rights which would guarantee, among other things, a job with a "living wage", a home, medical care, and education. One wonders if Moore will make a movie about the last after having covered the others (q.v. Roger & Me and Sicko).