December 5, 2005
The Corporation
I watched The Corporation and it made me cry and I went to the library and checked out The Ecology of Commerce. I am so frigging impressionable.
As a movie it’s not great–a bit bloated and unfocused. But as a
persuasive conveyor of information and pusher of buttons it is highly
effective.
Filed by cynthia rockwell at 11:26 am under Just Movies
3 Comments
A bit bloated and unfocused? I completely disagree. In comparison to the vast majority of activist documentaries, I think The Corporation is tight, tight, tight. Yes, it deals with a lot, and has to leave out a lot as well (a fact that it implicitly acknowledges), but the whole notion of what it’s dealing with is incredibly nebulous to begin with. I think it’s one of the best documentaries of the decade–not only in terms of what it says, but also it terms of how it says it (structure, tone, and so on).
well we disagree. but if you’re going to compare it only to activist documentaries sure, it’s the best of that limited lot. but the structure they tried to impose on it (comparing the corporation to a psychopath) got lost in all the information they were conveying. when a half hour passes before you move on to the next personality trait, the viewer tends to forget there was a structural scheme to begin with.
Oh, I didn’t just mean activist docos (thanks for calling me on that though).
And the psychopath comparison was, at most, only part of the film’s structure; it was a ‘sub-structure’ in one of the film’s eight or nine chapters, not the overall structure itself.
But, yes, we disagree.