by MATTHEW HAYS

Does America have a ruling class? Can a culture that bills itself as a place where anyone can make it face up to the idea that an elite controls it?

These are the questions raised by The American Ruling Class, a part-documentary, part-drama, part-musical hybrid written and “introduced” by Lewis Lapham, lefty journalist and former Harper’s editor.

The film’s central conceit is that two young men, fresh from Yale, are now making their way in the world. Played by actors, these men must try and figure out if they are going to join sleazy law firms or corporations to get ahead, or if they’re going to be idealistic and try to make the world a better place. Lapham sends them on their mission: talk to a number of people in the know about America’s ruling class. Its existence is pretty much a given; Lapham suggests it exists without a doubt. But not everyone in America agrees.

Robert Altman does. In a moment that now seems incredibly moving, given that the man just died last week, Lapham and one of his wide-eyed naïfs approaches the director, who says there is a ruling class, and who also feels that films can make a difference in changing the status quo.

But the film’s best moment comes with a Barbara Ehrenreich interview. In the late ’90s, Ehrenreich went undercover to take on various low-wage jobs (waitress, hotel chambermaid among them) and then report on how difficult it was to live on those earnings. She discusses her findings here, which culminate in a full-blown musical number, in which employees sing about being nickel-and-dimed. The scene is divine madness.

Every film must have a culprit, and Republican operative James Baker supplies one here. He’s the one who has a rosy, optimistic spin on America, suggesting that just about anyone can make it and all is well. He doesn’t need to be handed much rope to hang himself.

Ultimately, The American Ruling Class feels like a documentary version of The Wizard of Oz as director John Kirby and Lapham attempt to illuminate the heart of darkness inside the American political-economic machine. What they find ain’t pretty.

The American Ruling Class screens as part of the Cinema Politica series (cinemapolitica. org) Monday, Dec. 11, at Concordia’s deSÈve Cinema

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