Less is Moore

Over the past month, Michael Moore has been explaining that he’s been thinking about doing a movie on capitalism for as long as he’s been making movies, that no matter what subject he takes on, it always comes back to the issue of something being wrong or unfair about the economic situation America.

“So I felt that instead of dancing around it anymore, I’d just go for it,” he said.

And go for it he does in a film that, as usual, cleverly mixes very serious, often heartbreaking and anger-inducing situations with wry humor.

Of course, there’s also his hammer-to-the-head approach of getting his message across. Using bits from a 1950s-era educational film called “Life in Ancient Rome,” he paints a then-and-now picture of brutal entertainment — lions versus Christians and Ultimate Fighters versus themselves, the fact that the emperor was above the law and a photo of Dick Cheney.

But soon he’s on the road, talking with city folks and farmers who are in the process of being evicted, chatting with actor Wally Shawn about free enterprise (a useless segment that sticks out, sore thumb-like), showing his own family’s happy home vacation movies from the ’50s and admitting that “if this was capitalism, we loved it.”

Moore finally sinks his teeth and claws into the matter at hand when he turns the film into a history lesson, starting with President Ronald Reagan and his Treasury secretary, Donald Regan, attempting to run America as a corporation, continuing on through a George W. Bush speech in which he extols the tenets of capitalism. Without missing a beat, Moore introduces the story behind America’s economic collapse, and how big banks fared so much better than suffering citizens.

To his credit, Moore is on camera far less than in past films, and his gentle, sing-songy narration is a good contrast to the sad, angry people who are speaking out about losing their homes and jobs to poorly run banks and greedy corporations. It’s kind of shocking to hear the foul language coming from some of these folks, and even from Moore, but their frustration is plain to see and hear.

Moore wittily trips up certain “experts” who can’t explain what derivatives are, and he pulls a gleeful New York City-wide prank with a fake armored car. But by the end, it’s clear that he’s not fooling around: Moore is demanding change, and Capitalism lays out plenty of reasons as to why it’s needed.