“I refuse to live in a country like this: and I’m not leaving.”

Speaking of my ebbed passion for Messrs Smith and Gervais in my Cemetery Junction review, it’s odd how I came to this latest documentary by Michael Moore, who hasn’t even done anything in particular since Fahrenheit 9/11 to lose my admiration. Nevertheless, though SiCKO was a perfectly fine and often emotional indictment of the US healthcare system, I even still forget just how enthusiastic I was for Fahrenheit. It remains, even despite my not having seen it once again in the past 4 or 5 years, high up in my top 100 movies of all-time. And I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say, my emotional response to this one came pretty close to as powerful.

You wouldn’t think a movie about financial collapse could be so moving. But after a snarky opening comparing modern day America to Ancient Rome at its peak before collapse, Moore plunges us into terrifyingly personal footage of a family facing eviction. We hear of young people being put in juvenile prisons for profit. Moore unearths some incredible footage, including Jimmy Carter warning against the very financial nightmares America has recently faced, and Franklyn D. Roosevelt outlining the “Second Bill of Rights”.

On the humour side, we get a spot-on bank-talking Jesus, and home loans being offered in the Godfather’s voice. It’s on the humour side also, though, that the movie unfortunately takes its one dip, when Moore pulls his typical “stunt”, trying to physically get the banks to “give the money back” to the people which really fell flat for me personally, not even coming close to the “returning the bullets to Walmart” scene in Bowling for Columbine and instead just making me feel painfully embarrassed for Moore.

But it’s a small and inevitable blemish on what otherwise is a horrifying look at a far too accepted part of modern-life that’s second only perhaps to the marginally more terrifying The Corporation. He ends on images of hurricane Katrina and that line above and it’s impossible not to feel as bitter as he does about this state of affairs, whether you’re American or not. Like SiCKO it might not seem to be as immediately important a documentary as Fahrenheit 9/11, but I’ve a feeling it probably is.

Tags: America, documentary, money

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