Michael Moore's Lasting Effect
A review of "The Big One," a Michael Moore movie...
An Entrance, An Exit
Reviewer: John P Bernat (Kingsport, TN USA) - See all my reviews
Moore cannot do a whole movie - he does not have it in him.
Even his best movie, "Bowling for Columbine," is, at essence, a collection of vignettes but informed by an overall questing sensibility. Why do we like our guns? With that being understood, why are we so violent with them?
Well, Charlie Chaplin described the essence of acting as having a good entrance and a good exit.
In this film, the entrance is a national tour, meant to discover the real America via interview and question-and-answer sessions in meeting halls. Moore is using, roughly, a technique the unions used to favor for organizing. Even the unions, though, from hard experience, came to learn that this method was not producing results.
It's a quaint technique, filled with sentimental attraction, but it does not work any more. We've been purged of that kind of attention span by entertainment and information access.
The exit? Moore claims credit for successfully organizing union bargaining units at two Borders locations. He does a standup talking about how hypocritical big business is by insisting on free enterprise, when they do not themselves believe in it. He is drinking a bottle of Evian water. Evian is bottled in France. Moore will not drink anything but Evian and if a different (American-bottled) brand is furnished, he will refuse to speak.
His sad exit. I like the fact that he expresses a point of view not heard enough in our country, but he abuses the privilege his success has conferred on him. Like the corrupt union bosses in the 1950s, he, too, has fallen prey to the temptations of success.
Yesterday (7/9/2005), I visited one of the Borders stores in West Des Moines that Moore takes credit for organizing. The movie depicts this as a triumph. The checkout lady confirmed that this was the Borders store in the movie, but that it is now non-union. She asked around, and only one out of the entire store staff on hand even remembered that a union represented these employees at one time. She said that the union was decertified over a year ago because they never bargained a first contract, and was doing nothing at all for the employees.
Does this sound like Michael Moore himself?
An Entrance, An Exit
Reviewer: John P Bernat (Kingsport, TN USA) - See all my reviews
Moore cannot do a whole movie - he does not have it in him.
Even his best movie, "Bowling for Columbine," is, at essence, a collection of vignettes but informed by an overall questing sensibility. Why do we like our guns? With that being understood, why are we so violent with them?
Well, Charlie Chaplin described the essence of acting as having a good entrance and a good exit.
In this film, the entrance is a national tour, meant to discover the real America via interview and question-and-answer sessions in meeting halls. Moore is using, roughly, a technique the unions used to favor for organizing. Even the unions, though, from hard experience, came to learn that this method was not producing results.
It's a quaint technique, filled with sentimental attraction, but it does not work any more. We've been purged of that kind of attention span by entertainment and information access.
The exit? Moore claims credit for successfully organizing union bargaining units at two Borders locations. He does a standup talking about how hypocritical big business is by insisting on free enterprise, when they do not themselves believe in it. He is drinking a bottle of Evian water. Evian is bottled in France. Moore will not drink anything but Evian and if a different (American-bottled) brand is furnished, he will refuse to speak.
His sad exit. I like the fact that he expresses a point of view not heard enough in our country, but he abuses the privilege his success has conferred on him. Like the corrupt union bosses in the 1950s, he, too, has fallen prey to the temptations of success.
Yesterday (7/9/2005), I visited one of the Borders stores in West Des Moines that Moore takes credit for organizing. The movie depicts this as a triumph. The checkout lady confirmed that this was the Borders store in the movie, but that it is now non-union. She asked around, and only one out of the entire store staff on hand even remembered that a union represented these employees at one time. She said that the union was decertified over a year ago because they never bargained a first contract, and was doing nothing at all for the employees.
Does this sound like Michael Moore himself?
posted by John Bernat @ 11:22 AM
1 Comments:
At Tue Jul 26, 01:00:00 PM PDT,
Anonymous said…
Ouch! You should do a movie on HIS 'projects'. Kinda like vacuuming up the dust he disturbed to see if there's any changes underneath.
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