By Michael Moore, 1997.
Documentary, featuring Michael Moore and an assortment of others.
Rating: 8/10, 7.5/10.
Michael Moore is a genius. No matter what you say, I will never change that opinion. Take this movie. It’s kind of a toss-off, "Hey, while we’re at it, let’s make a movie on the side" thing, and yet it is still fantastic.
It doesn’t have the central focus that Roger & Me had or Bowling For Columbine would have a few years later, but while that does mean that it’s not the masterpiece that those movies are, it certainly doesn’t hurt this one much at all. The film follows Moore on his book tour, promoting Downsize This, as he goes from town to town, fighting evil as he goes. He hands out "Downsizer Of The Year" certificates, presents corporations moving their factories to Mexico with gigantic novelty checks for under a dollar, to pay their Mexican workers for the first hour of work, to show his support. He meets in secret with Borders workers, who weren’t allowed to work during his book signing in case they got bad unionist ideas from him. Most of all, he meets with the CEO of Nike and asks him to justify the fact that his shoes are made by underpaid workers in Indonesia.
This interview forms the horrifying conclusion of the movie, with the CEO’s responses to Moore’s questions ranking among the most straight-up frightening things I’ve ever heard. At one point, he says that he actually believes that Indonesians WANT to make shoes, and Americans don’t. Aside from the "Why don’t they eat cake?" implications of this statement, there’s also a lot of implied racism: Indonesians and Americans are, on some level, fundamentally different; Indonesians want to do factory work, Americans are too good (perhaps?) for that. Terrifying.
Moore’s ingenious confrontations are just as wonderful as ever. My favorite was the one with the governor of Wisconsin ("I HATE HIM!" screamed Anne, my friend from Madison, when his name was mentioned). This governor was cutting welfare back as far as he could, saying that handouts made people lazy and not want to work (at the same time, I’m sure, as he was giving tax cuts and handouts to the rich for "incentive"), so Moore gathered up a bunch of people on welfare—mostly black, mostly mothers—to come clean up the state capitol building. Officials (I can’t remember if the governor himself appeared—I think he did) protested, saying they already had a janitorial staff. But the fabulous women just kept saying, "We want to work! You already pay us, let us work for you!"
And this brings me to an important point: I’m sure that not everyone on welfare in Wisconsin is a black woman with children. Black mothers just suited Moore’s purposes better. His movies are propaganda, pure and simple, and to deny this would be silly. Regardless, it is still true that the Border’s employees were forced to meet with Moore in secret, that thousands of people were getting laid off, not to ensure profits to corporations, but to ensure that those profits would continue to get bigger every year, and that the CEO of Nike is a seriously dangerous man. In other words, yes, Moore’s films are manipulations, but manipulations that aim to amplify the truth, rather than conceal it. And since the majority of all information that the average citizen gets is the concealing kind of propaganda, I say more power to him.
Aside from all this, Moore and whoever he’s got working with him are master film-makers. If his films’ editing isn’t studied intensively at film schools, it should be. His use of music (David Bowie’s "Panic In Detroit" was really memorable here) is ingenious. Et cetera, really.
Oh, and by the way...watch out for the part with Steve Forbes. He really doesn’t blink, and it’s scary.