Power Play
by Chris Dashiell

Giving the lie to the assumption that a film about economics has to be boring, The Corporation, a documentary by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott, explores, with rigorous intelligence and energy, many aspects of the institution that has come to dominate our world.

Mainstream economics assumes that the power of the corporation is founded in some sort of natural law -- that the "free market" is a basic and essential element of human society that works best without regulation. The film demonstrates that corporations were originally granted authority by the government for specific purposes, and had a limited time frame. After the Civil War, by an ingenious interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, corporations won a Supreme Court decision declaring them to have the legal rights of a "person." This led to the ever-expanding power of an entity that no longer owed obligations to anyone but its stockholders.

One surprising fact revealed here is that a corporation is actually legally bound to do nothing that would interfere with the profit interests of its investors. The film incorporates this fact in a way that is fresh and insightful. There is no demonization of individuals here, as if the problem was simply a moral one concerning selfishness or greed. The focus is instead on the principles inherent in the institution -- it's the system that is faulty, not the people. Among the film's many talking-head interviews are not only anti-corporate thinkers and activists such as Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein, but pro-corporate CEOs, economists, and other business people, whose pronouncements often confirm the same ideas put forward by corporate critics. The film itself is unabashedly critical, but its presentation of other views, without sarcasm, is effective in making the film more comprehensive.

The picture's cleverest idea (probably hatched by screenwriters Joel Bakan and Harold Crooks) is to ask, in effect, "If a corporation is legally a person, what kind of a person is it?" and then to make a list of psychological traits (inability to feel remorse or accept responsibility, complete self-absorption, insensitivity to possible harm caused to others, etc.) as evidenced by numerous examples of corporate behavior. The conclusion, according to the standard diagnostic manual, is that the corporation, considered as a "person" would be classified as a psychopath.

At a fairly swift pace, with inventive use of graphics, and the occasional amusing (yet informative) use of old training and propaganda films, Achbar and Abbot zero in on different aspects of corporate activity, from Monsanto's suppression of a news story exposing the dangers of a drug used on dairy cows, through IBM complicity in the Nazi death camps, to the brutality and exploitation of sweatshops and the marketing of products to children (with an advertising expert extolling the "power of nagging" by children to get their parents to buy stuff). The details are fascinating, for the most part, and they well illustrate the more general arguments. This is a model for how a documentary can be both partisan and educational.

And it's not a complete downer, either. The final section turns, naturally, to what people can do about the situation, and there are examples offered of hope and inspiration, such as the interviews with CEO Ray Anderson, who became a convert to environmentalism, or the story of how the people in Bolivia defeated an IMF-sponsored scheme to privatize their water. The Corporation invokes understanding and commitment, rather than mere outrage, succeeding in conveying a message that will energize viewers to do something positive to help effect sorely needed change.

Jonathan Demme has had a love affair with Haiti for close to twenty years -- he's produced several documentaries about the political and social problems of that impoverished country, and he helped found the organization Artists for Democracy in Haiti. On the heels of last year's coup comes The Agronomist, Demme's portrait of Haitian activist and champion of free speech radio Jean Dominique. The title refers to Dominique's original profession -- his interest in agricultural led to a concern for the plight of the Haitian farmer, and by a series of fortuitous circumstances, to the founding of Radio Haiti, an independent news station that became a voice of opposition to dictatorship.

Dominique was quite a personality -- in the film's numerous interviews he usually seems boisterous and full of humor, even in the worst situations. Short and wiry, his endlessly voluble and energetic style is enough to charm anyone with a heart. He was very popular in Haiti, but not with the military or the brutal "tonton macoutes" -- the thugs who kept the order for the Duvaliers and their later incarnations.

The efforts of Dominique and his courageous wife, Michele Montas, serve as a springboard for Demme to present an overview of Haitian political history since the American occupation of the island in the early 20th century. The radio station flourished in the 70s, when Jimmy Carter's human rights policies kept "Baby Doc" Duvalier in check. But when Reagan came to power, Dominique says, "the cowboy was back in the White House," and persecutions began, ending with the destruction of the station and the exile of Dominique and Montas in New York. After protests led to the end of Duvalier's rule in 1986, Dominique returned home again. The greeting he received by an ecstatic crowd at the airport is one of the film's most affecting scenes.

The election of populist priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1990 was supported by Dominique, and Aristide's overthrow in a military coup a year later led to another exile. He returned to rebuild the station once again after Aristide was restored to power. In later years we see him becoming increasingly critical of Aristide's government, questioning him rather severely in a radio interview. In 2000, during another presidential campaign, the 69-year-old Dominique was assassinated in the driveway of his station. The killers have never been brought to justice.

Demme has constructed his film from newsreel footage and interviews, some of them by Demme himself. The Agronomist is a tribute to the irrepressible little man who believed in the power of radio, and to the Haitian people who believed in him. It ends on a slyly triumphant note, with Montas announcing on the air that Dominique is not actually dead, but has been spotted in various places in Haiti, laughing and swapping stories with peasants. It would seem that broadcasting a legend is one way of affirming the truth.

One person's inspiration is another person's indigestion, or so it would seem from What the #$*! Do We Know!?, a film by William Arntz, Betsy Chasse, and Mark Vicente. This word-of-mouth hit purports to be about quantum physics, and it features some interesting snippets of interviews with leading scientists. But I knew I was in trouble when the film kept detouring into weak episodic lessons on life featuring a fictional character played by Marlee Matlin.

The picture is positing quantum physics as a sort of self-help technique -- taking ideas about the role of consciousness in the universe and drawing vague and simplistic conclusions about creating our own reality. The scientific ideas are provocative, yet the filmmakers don't bother to seriously explore the implications, opting instead for a lot of pseudo-mystical rhetoric, combined with cute animation and tiresome attempts at building a story around Matlin's empty character. It's revealing that, although there are fourteen scientists being interviewed, the person who gets the most time is a channeler -- J.Z. Knight, who calls the spirit she "channels" Ramtha, and talks a lot of artificially elevated bunk.

There's also a long wedding scene that is somehow supposed to illustrate the action of neuropeptides, among other things, and here the filmmakers' attempts at humor are blatantly sexist. Is this the New Age? What the #$*! Do We Know!? isn't doing quantum physics any favors, that's for sure. I found it incredibly shallow, condescending, and dull. Yes, the ideas in quantum physics agree in many respects with the age-old insights of Eastern religion and philosophy. A good film could have been made from this, but only if it respected the intelligence of the audience. This film is like a spiritual pep rally for the ignorant. It wants to dazzle rather than help us understand, and I've learned that dazzle wears off pretty quickly. So does this movie.

©2004 Chris Dashiell
CineScene