The Corporation Review
by Andrew Staker (mallowisious AT hotmail DOT com)September 28th, 2004
THE CORPORATION
This calm and thought-out doco asks the audience to relax and prepare to meet their inescapable neighbour, the thing known as a corporation: a company existing as a legal 'person'. The soothing narrative voice of Mikela J Mikael invites us to stick with it. Structured into parts that each get a title card, we get to meet people on the inside and on the outside of the corporate world.
Told that Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky are among the incamera speakers, you might think that this is another left-wing call to arms, loaded with bias. This is more like a quarter-truth; which may disappoint some people! Great care has been taken to be sympathetic not to corporations (Coke/Maccas/Shell stand no chance) but rather to the people running these contemporary
leviathans.
Directors Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar remained firmly out of the camera's gaze. Yet they're very investigative, both into the present and into the past, offering archival footage and so forth. The picture they paint in the first three quarters grows increasingly ominous... like a '70s Charlton Heston sci-fi... then the last bit is full of hope for 'the little people' standing up and making a difference, including examples. I suppose this gives some kind of narrative shape, which makes it more watchable than a pile of facts.
I say that since this is 'anno documentariorum', go out and see this. It's definitely more even than Michael Moore's work and far broader than Supersize Me. If nothing else, it's made me start taking notice of which corporation owns the brands I consume. And, in a sneaky move, the filmmakers refuse to let you hear the words to "Happy Birthday to you"... watch The Corporation to find out why... and do so before the air we breathe is sold!—supposedly.
Andrew Staker
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
