Capitalism: a love story

Food Inc. was nominated for Best Documentary Oscar and earned US$4 million in its home box office. Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore's latest (2009) assault on the American system, didn't get an Oscar nomination but it grossed US$14 million. Is it more than three times better? Does that explain its relative success?

Yes and No. Yes, it's many times better as movie education and entertainment. No, a radical viewpoint such as Moore's only gets into multiplexes because Moore is his own ungainly star attraction and, more importantly, because the Weinstein brothers' distribution and publicity machine backed him. With good commercial reasons: Moore is a Woody Allen of political documentaries. He always turns out a competent product that's worth buying.

In one of his customary stunts, Moore goes to Wall Street to find out what a derivative is. Can I get some advice, he asks office workers exiting the towers. Don't make another movie, one responds, and Moore includes that mock-modest put-down. At the end of the movie, though, his commentary suggests that he's getting tired of the fight, and hopes another generation of rabble-rousers will join the battle against America's forces of capitalist evil.

The movie's title, and his customary references to his middle-class Catholic home in Flint, Michigan, are Moore's saddened assessment of an American Dream that was worth loving. It went sour and became worthy of hatred, in Moore's unforgiving eyes, when it was taken over by Wall Street, by the self-serving very rich top 1 per cent of the population.

FDR's call for a second Bill of Rights was ignored, Jimmy Carter's warning about greed was an incentive for the very rich to get Reagan into power. He was a puppet of Regan, just as W was Cheney's. Clinton consolidated the stranglehold of Goldman Sachs on America's economic and financial systems. Politicians in Congress were bought, and funds were even thrust into Obama's campaign. Moore doesn't follow that particular money trail, but his fans will sense that the next documentary of accusations is writing itself in Pennsylvania Avenue.

This time, there is a damning array of facts and opinions, designed to convince the jury of movie-goers that America needs to divorce itself from its current undemocratic and perverted capitalist system. At times, of course, Moore goes OTT with photogenic gimmicks. Less forgivably, he appears to skew an argument that he could have won without trickery.

There's a lengthy segment showing how corporate giants buy "Dead Peasant" insurance policies on their employees' lives. But Moore never gives anyone a chance to explain why corporations might want to insure that the sudden death of an employee didn't result in a loss of profitability due to retraining and re-organisational needs. He doesn't ask insurance companies and their brokers why and how they flogged this product, why no company thought of offering the employees involved a share of the proceeds. Irritated, I felt swindled too, by Moore.

That's his strength as a movie-maker. He does arouse his audience. He shows he's angry, albeit like a court jester. The very rich would have to invent him if he hadn't invented himself. He's one way that truly revolutionary cries can be ignored.