- Capitalism: A Love Story is Moore’s broadest film in terms of scope. Previously he has tended to train his hammy outrage on more manageable targets: General Motors; the Iraq war; America’s healthcare system. But to take on an entire global economic system? It’s a lot to cover, even with the characteristically broad brushstrokes that constitute Moore’s documentary film-making.
- As a result, the film can seem a little skittish and unfocused. Moore skips from tearful foreclosed families evicted from the homes they put their lives into, to kids locked up for profit in privatised juvenile detention centres, to airline pilots forced to work second jobs to survive, to, somewhat randomly, an interview with the Princess Bride actor and playwright Wallace Shawn. It’s only through sheer force of will from Moore, and the skill of some exceptionally talented editors (seven are credited), that a coherent argument emerges from the swamp of social malaise.
- The film showcases Moore at his undeniably powerful best and his exploitative, manipulative worst. The film is brilliantly researched, both with regard to the labyrinthine web of connections between the world of finance and the corridors of power and the wittily used archive footage. Interviews with Senate insiders and financial experts are informative, and there’s an amusing sequence in which he quizzes a selection of priests and bishops who opine that capitalism is “evil” and was not, in fact, the preferred economic model of Our Lord.
- Then Moore goes and spoils it all by hauling out his trusty bullhorn for a series of lame stunts. Like the complacent clown prince of agitprop, Moore hectors Wall Street doormen and security guards, while the company bosses remain in their fortress made of money, blissfully unaware of the fat man making a scene on the street far below. In addition, there’s a ghoulish fascination with other people’s misery. When a child starts to weep quietly as his family talk about his dead mother, the camera lurches forward hungrily: no tear is wasted.
- But for all his cheap tactics, Moore mounts a persuasive case that something is rotten in the current economic system. He ends the film with what sounds like a campaign slogan: “I refuse to live in a country like this. And I’m not leaving!” he rages, before exhorting the audience to “join me”.
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