A MICHAEL MOORE MUST SEE FOR ALL AMERICANS
Michael Moore is a national treasure. Those who have the guts to stand up and clearly and convincingly speak truth to power should be listened to and celebrated. For over 20 years Michael Moore has been doing just that, and in CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY he takes on his biggest, most powerful subject yet - the crippling inequities of our entire economic/political system.
In ROGER & ME, BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, FAHRENHEIT 9/11, SICKO, and now CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY, Moore has explored subjects that strike at the heart of who we are as a country, using the documentary form in an entertaining and often heartbreaking fashion. Though rarely able to refute the facts or substance of his work, his detractors have vilified him, accusing him of being a self-aggrandizing, partisan buffoon. But while Michael Moore is always the conscience-driven guide through his films, the films are not about him. They're about us.
In CAPTALISM he takes an unblinking look at how our economic system is completely and utterly rigged to fail and exploit the majority of the people while further enriching the already wealthy. Moore contends that the roots of our contemporary economic malaise reach back to our cowboy/corporate shill of a President, Ronald Reagan. The most recent result is the billions and billions of your tax dollars handed over to greedy failed banks and insurance companies by unelected government officials who ignored a Congressional vote against those very bailouts. Of course, these are the same figures (Hank Paulson, et al.) who once fed like pigs at the trough of those corrupt financial institutions and who are currently making economic policy (Geithner, Summers) in the Obama administration.
If Michael Moore was a dry, academic documentarian rather than the populist provocateur he is, no one would pay much attention to what he had to say. It's his ability as a filmmaker to show us the human element behind the nightmare that makes him so effective. It's also what has turned him into a nemesis of both the rich and powerful whose obscene practices he exposes and the average Americans exploited by fear into believing those commanding forces have their best interests at heart.
But Moore is never all about the negative. Showing us successful examples of populist empowerment (employee-run companies, neighbors defying banks to keep people in their homes), he is saying there is an alternative. And as a filmmaker, he keeps us totally involved on an emotional and intellectual level for the 2-plus hour running time of his movie.
In the end, Moore's thesis is simple. We live in a democratic political system in which the people are supposed to decide their fate. But we also live under a capitalist economic system in which wealth decides people's fates. In 21st century America, capitalism has crushed democracy. and it's time to take our country back!
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Overview
Twenty years after his influential debut, Roger & Me, Michael Moore returns to his roots by pulling back the curtain on capitalism to reveal the insidious role it has played in the destruction of the American dream for many people. Back in 1989, auto workers in Flint, MI, were lamenting layoffs and wondering how they would support their families without jobs to pay the bills, or benefits to ensure their health. Flash forward two decades, when cities all across the country are feeling the same pressures that Flint residents were back when GM left them high and dry. With an average of 14,000 U.S. jobs lost every day and taxpayer money constantly being pumped into failing financial institutions, the question must be