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Venice acclaims Michael Moore’s ‘Capitalism’
Film festival audience and critics rave about Moore’s latest movie, Capitalism, which takes on Wall Street and Big Business
Director Michael Moore has received a rousing reception at the Venice Film Festival for his latest documentary. Capitalism: A Love Story earned positive reviews after a press showing on Saturday evening and was greeted with wild applause at its world premiere on Sunday night. Variety called it one of Moore's "best pics".
In this latest film, Moore, the combative documentary director who took on George Bush's 'war on terror' with Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004 and the US healthcare industry with 2007's Sicko, has the money men in his sights.
His impassioned examination of Wall Street's excesses and the lives shattered by corporate greed sees him point the finger at everyone from Ronald Reagan to Bush to Alan Greenspan. Capitalism is also filled with trademark Moore gimmicks, such as wrapping crime scene tape around Wall Street institutions and attempting to make citizen arrests of bank CEOs.
Time magazine's Mary Corliss called Moore's latest film his "magnum opus", consolidating the themes of earlier documentaries such as his breakthrough film, 1989's Roger & Me, in which he confronts General Motors CEO Roger Smith. "[It is] the grandest statement of his career-long belief that big business is screwing the hard-working little guy while government connives in the atrocity."
In a four-star review for the Guardian, Xan Brooks said that although the film "posits a simple moral universe inhabited by good little guys and evil big ones" its basic thrust still proved irresistible. "If the film finally lacks the clean, hard punch provided by the record-breaking Fahrenheit 9/11, that can only be because the crime scene is so vast and the culprits so numerous."
It is Moore's first time at the Venice Film Festival, where Capitalism is in contention for the top prize, the Golden Lion, to be awarded on September 12. In 2007 he won the Palme d'Or at Cannes for Fahrenheit 9/11, the highest-ever grossing documentary.
Yesterday he told reporters on the Lido that he was "personally affected by good people who struggle, who work hard and who've had their lives ruined by decisions that are made by people who do not have their best interest at heart, but who have the best interest of the bottom line, of the company, at heart."
He added that the change had already started with the election of President Obama. "The revolt you think I am calling for has actually begun. It began November 4." But he added: “Obama will rise or fall based on what we all do to support him because democracy is a participatory sport." ·
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Michael Moore will be acclaimed as a great moviemaker as long as there is a substantial population of the mentally deficient in the world.His monstrous lies and gross perversion of truth make him so endearing to this disabled segment.
All credit to Michael Moores for sketching an image of a nation in slavery. One day the people of the US will decide, like many enslaved people before them, to revolt against their owners. It could happen that the bulk of the population would go on a payments strike. No credit card payments, no mortgage payments, no insurance payments no car payments etc.. The banks and all the other loan sharks would be deprived of their oxygen and float belly up to the surface. It is possible to live without credit. Credit is the hard drug of the majority of Americans. One day perhaps they will kick the pernicious habit. Then we would see real change. It could be easier to start than we think, it just needs a grass roots campaign, choose a start date and 'bingo'!
Whatever one's view of the current recession, it's a safe bet that the sub-prime dealers and the big bank bosses still have a lot more money in their accounts than the rest of us. At least Michael Moore tries to introduce those fat-cats to the concept of "Shame".
Comparing the sharp-witted and potent commentary of Michael Moore with the effete dross of Sacha Baron Cohen clearly highlights a major deficit of perception.
You'd have to be an ostrich to escape the conclusion that the banks reaped what they had sown in the meltdown. I cheered when Lehmann Bros hit the deck.
I think Michael Moore is severely deluded if he thinks the current financial crisis is the result of "decisions that are made by people who ... have the best interest of the bottom line, of the company, at heart". Would that they had the best interests of their companies at heart, and we wouldn't have ended up in this mess. I enjoy Michael Moore's films as entertaining polemic, but frankly I doubt that this film will provide deep insights into the workings of capitalism on the level of Smith, Hayek, Keynes or Marx for that matter. Put the "right on" attitude of Moore to one side, and what you have essentially is another Borat or Bruno. Nothing wrong with that, but lets hope it delivers on the comedy as well as the works of one S B Cohen.