The film is a version of the autobiographical novel of the same name by journalist Rula Jebreal, who also wrote the screenplay, about growing up in Palestine in the 1980's. Schnabel and Jebreal are now in love, (did I mention she looks like, and is groomed as, a supermodel?) and from my perhaps ungenerous perspective, the film is shaped by Schnabel's obvious romance with the brown world, albeit a feminized one, which he claims he only recently discovered (although his prior films Basquiat and Before Night Falls are precedents). A cynical mind might call this "trauma tourism," the appeal of stories from the underdeveloped world being their cathartic effects. We are left by his film with a light sprinkle of therapeutic tears, not the kind of itchy political ire I was hoping for. Where's Brecht when you need him the most? Read more>>
In Film
A Review of "Capitalism: A Love Story," directed by Michael Moore
Crimes have been committed in this building. I am here to make a citizen's arrest.
In the final scene of "Capitalism: A Love Story," Michael Moore drags police tape around city blocks that house the corporate offices of Goldman Sachs, AIG, Merrill Lynch, Citibank, Wachovia, and J.P. Morgan Chase--all recipients of taxpayer money used by the federal government as part of a "bailout" package. Moore's stated purpose is to make a "citizen's arrest" of the criminals who, when faced with the ramifications of their own financial faux-pas, "backed an armored car up to the US treasury" only to leave with 700 billion dollars of "our money." Moore figures each corporate building as the scene of a crime, leaving us to ponder the implications of what William Pietz once called the "forensics of capital..."
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