Capitalism: A Love Story (A)

Dir: Michael Moore; USA documentary, 2009, 120 minutes; Michael Moore, George W. Bush

Premieres 20 November

The miracle of Michael Moore is not just that he made documentaries for the masses, but that such a critic of the United States found a voice in the belly of the beast. And while most people get fat and lazy with success, he just stayed fat. Instead of resting on his laurels, with Capitalism: A Love Story he digs even deeper into his critique, going to the heart of the ‘evil’ that underpins the cultural psychoses that were the subjects of his other films.

Moore takes us through random profiles of capitalism’s recent victims: a family documenting their own eviction from inside their home; farmers forced out of their house by a bank that pays them to clean it; corporations that buy ‘dead peasant’ insurance policies to cash in on their employees’ deaths; and a few ‘power of the people’ moments, such as a successful sit-in by Illinois factory workers, and a neighborhood rallying around a poor family squatting in its own home.

Although Moore is fuzzy on alternatives and is scared to call himself a socialist - lest he lose his, er, market -one thing he’s clear on is that ‘capitalism is evil, and you can’t regulate evil. You have to eliminate it.’

Those who are tired of Moore’s shtick will be annoyed by him wrapping a bank in yellow crime-scene tape, or trying to force his way into corporate office buildings once again. The difference now is that Moore is making fun of himself. When he drives an armoured truck to Wall Street to reclaim taxpayers’ money after the government’s $700 billion bailout, he exaggerates the tropes of old action movies. But these scenes detract from the gravity of his polemic, since even the cops recognise him and play along.

The film suffers a bit from sprawl. There’s a segment on how regional pilots don’t get paid so well, which seems trivial compared with the history of capitalism’s depredations. But Moore has always had trouble killing his darlings, and once he did an interview with a pilot on welfare, he couldn’t resist including it.

One gem is footage of President Franklin D Roosevelt’s 1944 proposal of a second bill of rights that would grant every citizen the right to a job, a home, medical care and an education. Danes may have those things, but Americans never will, thanks to capitalism. In fact Denmark is the perfect place to see this film, so you can leave the theatre and be blinded by the light of Roosevelt’s (and Moore’s) vision.

Playing nationwide