Uneasy money

Michael Moore takes on the U.S.
financial system in Capitalism: A Love Story

CASH CRUNCH: Capitalism: A Love Story

by MALCOLM FRASER

Michael Moore’s latest, Capitalism: A Love Story, makes the rest of his unsubtle oeuvre look positively wishy-washy; here, he takes aim at the capitalist system itself and delivers a damning verdict. The scattershot collage has the feeling of something that was slapped together quickly, to seize the moment of current citizen anger at the USA’s dicey financial system.

Although the film features all his tried-and-true methods, it’s both broader in scope and more personal. It turns out that Moore, a practising Catholic, has a religious opposition to capitalism—you wouldn’t hear it from the Christian right, but Jesus did preach a lot about the immorality of wealth and the importance of helping the poor.

Moore has always pissed people off, but in recent years, he’s even alienated people on his own side. There’s his notorious cherry-picking of facts—though, arguably, he exaggerates and embellishes no more than the average documentarian. (Canadians in particular have reason to be skeptical of his methods after his depictions of our fragile union as some sort of utopia.) Then there’s his prankster/street-theatre shtick, which started getting rusty pretty early on and now has the feeling of an over-the-hill comedian rolling out a tired old routine.

But in my not-so-humble opinion, a big part of the reason lefty/liberal critics have tired of Moore is because of his penchant for oversimplification. He’s the Rush Limbaugh of the left—a big blowhard who dumbs down the issues, engages in sloganeering and ad hominem attacks, and unabashedly tries to stir up popular outrage. As obnoxious as the right wing’s attacks on “liberal elites” and “liberal media” are, those groups do actually exist (trust me—I’m part of them both), and we like to see political arguments laid out with nuance and complexity, whereas Moore has always aimed squarely for the masses.

But using his platform to attack such a fundamental element of American society, while appealing to spiritual values, is a tricky feat, not to mention a brave act. Even if his results are uneven, he’s definitely the only celebrity who would openly advocate a radical overhaul of the system. He has two qualities that many mainstream liberals sorely lack—a willingness to play dirty, and balls.

CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY
OPENS THIS FRIDAY, OCT. 2