Capitalism: A Love Story

The basics 

Capitalism: A Love Story is an American documentary which was made in 2009. It is the latest in a long line of documentaries made by one of America's best-known and most controversial documentarians Michael Moore. This film is about Capitalism, America, greed, corruption, corporations and the effect they have had on the everyday lives of Americans.

What is this film about?

In this film we follow Michael Moore as he talks to the Americans that have suffered the negative effects of capitalism. We get to see people who have unfairly lost their jobs, people being evicted from their homes and people who are worth more to their company’s dead than alive. He also goes to find out why this is happening by delving in to America’s modern history, by heading up to the political steps of Washington and to the financial hub of America, Wall Street.

My views on it

On the twenty year anniversary of Michael Moore’s first film, Roger & Me (1989), he is back with another documentary that likes to, yet again; take a few good old digs at the country he calls home.

Just so I can get this out of the way early on, I must say I did enjoy watching this film. It was really well put together, it had some good humour in places, I do enjoy Michael Moore’s hybrid style of documentary making between expository and performative, I learnt a few things and I am glad to have it as part of my DVD collection. But that’s doesn’t mean that this film is perfect, no not at all. I do admit when I was watching this film it was great. It held my interest, got me a bit angry at the things the film wanted me to get angry at and all in all I had a good time. It was only after watching this film when I started to mull it over in my head that I started to pick up on a few issues I had with it.

One of my issue I had with it was the irony of the film itself. This film is all about flinging mug at capitalism and how it has ruined the lives of so many Americans but by creating a film about this issue, Michael Moore himself has made a lot of money from it. Michael Moore’s current net worth is said to be about fifty million, so this goes to show that for somebody who hates capitalism, he is bloody good at it.

Another issue is that the film is 99% based around American capitalism, with only two very small mentions about Japan and German at the start and the end of the film. Now before I watch this film I knew it was going to be mainly about America but with a title like ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’ I was a little disappointed that it only focused on America. Capitalism is an economic system which is used throughout most of the world, here is a short list of some countries that uses capitalism as well

Canada
Mexico
Ireland
UK
France
Portugal
Spain
Belgium
Netherlands
Luxembourg
Italy
Sweden
Finland
Denmark
Cyprus
Austria
Czech Republic
Poland
Slovenia
Romania
Bulgaria
Greece
Australia
India
New Zealand

And many, many more. So by this almost denial to recognise that America is not the only place in the world with capitalism, the film becomes more about America then capitalism itself.  So for me the film dose lose some of its integrity because of this.

In his line of work I would not say it is his best but it is still a good film. As a piece of documentary film making I would not class this as a must see but I would say I don’t think you will be disappoint with this film either. Michael Moore is a quality film maker and this is evident in this movie, as it is in most of his films. All in all this film comes down to one simple question, do you like Michael Moore films? If yes you will love it if no you may have to give it a miss and if you haven’t see one before I would say watch Bowling for Columbine.

Favourite Quote 

Michael Moore:  ‘I refuse to live in a country like this, and I'm not leaving.’

Rating 3.5/5