Blu-Ray Review: ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’ Finds the Provocateur in Top Form

CHICAGO – No contemporary filmmaker has mastered the art of opinionated cinema better than Michael Moore. He doesn’t pretend to be fair and balanced, and he doesn’t claim to have all the answers. He’s more interested in raising questions that sorely need to be addressed and debated. There are few things more American than the act of questioning a system that most people have taken for granted.

Ever since his first (and still his best) picture, “Roger & Me,” stirred up cheers and controversy two decades ago, Moore has always marched to the beat of his own drummer, refusing to drink the government Kool-Aid so eagerly gulped by the lazy mainstream media. In “Capitalism: A Love Story,” Moore traces back through the events that led to our current financial crisis, beginning with President Reagan’s appointment of Don Regan, chairman and CEO of Merrill-Lynch, as his Treasury Secretary, and eventually his Chief of Staff.

Blu-Ray Rating: 4.5/5.0

The film argues that this pivotal event helped morph the country into a corporation, leading to the devastating unemployment that occurred nationwide as companies slashed jobs in order to make short-term profits. Most of the muck that Moore rakes in is guaranteed to boil the blood of moviegoers, regardless of their political affiliation. Just wait till you get a load of the corporate practice known as “Dead Peasants” life insurance, where companies wager on employees’ lives, expecting to profit from their deaths. Or the privatization of the Luzerne County Juvenile Center that united local judges and lawyers with the corporate entity PA Child Care, which profits from the detention of juveniles, thus leading to the unfair incarceration of 6,500 youths. Or the Citigroup memo claiming the US has become a “plutonomy” where the top one percent makes more than the bottom ninety-five.

Michael Moore stars in Capitalism: A Love Story.
Photo credit: Anchor Bay Entertainment

Moore wisely keeps his confrontational theatrics to a minimum, since they only really worked when he still had anonymity. For the most part, he lets his footage speak for itself, most memorably toward the end, when he unveils rarely-seen footage of an ailing FDR declaring his plans for a second Bill of Rights. The famously liberal filmmaker makes it clear that there’s just as many guilty Democrats as there are Republicans, particularly since Goldman Sachs (which helped to deregulate the financial industry) was President Obama’s number one private contributor. Moore may not offer a clear alternative to modern capitalism, but he does affirm the fact that one must be found. “Capitalism: A Love Story” ultimately tosses the ball into the audience’s court, and it’s entirely their loss if they refuse to pick it up.

Capitalism: A Love Story was released on Blu-Ray and DVD on March 9th, 2010. Photo credit: Anchor Bay Entertainment

The film is presented in 1080p High Definition (with a 1.78:1 aspect ratio), and includes a digital copy. There’s a wealth of excellent additional material on the disc, featuring Moore at his most urgent and focused. Don’t be fooled by the deleted scenes’ snarky titles, such as “The Rich Don’t Go To Heaven, There’s a Special Place Reserved For Them.” The extra footage is all deadly serious, and provokes as much worthy discussion and debate as the film itself. In her extended interview, Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren remembers how credit card agreements used to be one-and-a-half pages back in 1980, while today they’re usually over thirty pages, endangering consumer protection with their length and incomprehensibility. Moore’s priest, Father Dick Preston, believes that Jesus was a socialist, while claiming that the recent pirate stories from Somalia are a natural result of America’s exploitation of the country’s resources. Some of the most unsettling insights come from Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges, of the NY Times, who says that the use of unregulated capitalism is a “form of collective self-annihilation,” leading to a war-torn world overrun by environmental refugees.

Other Moore interviewees include Genesee County treasurer Dan Kildee, Congressman Elijah Cummings, Professor Tom Webb (who discusses the benefits of worker-owned cooperatives), the staff at Union Cab and the Bank of North Dakota, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” author Michael Pollan, and land rights advocate/organizer Max Rameau. Best of all is President Carter’s complete 
“Address to the Nation” speech from July 1979, which is as relevant now as it was then. Speaking with a forcefulness and conviction unheard of in today’s politics, Carter says that human identity in America “is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns.”

By MATT FAGERHOLM Staff Writer HollywoodChicago.com matt@hollywoodchicago.com