“It’s one thing for Maude Barlow to say governments have no power, and corporations are taking over the world. It’s another thing for the CEO of Goodyear to say the same thing.”
– Mark Achbar, director The Corporation, Globe and Mail
Named at Toronto’s International Film Festival as one of the top 10 movies of 2003, CBC News calls it “the best issue of Harper’s Magazine, set to music.” The Corporation opens in cinemas in Canada on January 17th and is set to get sane people across the country fired up and fighting.
As this article in the Globe and Mail points out, however, The Corporation thankfully isn’t a one-sided rant against capitalism. The directing team of Mark Achbar (dir: Manufacturing Consent), Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan apparently give equal time to the CEOs at the helm of the corporate ships. As Achbar says:
“If you don’t give space and respect and time to points of view that you don’t necessarily agree with, and you don’t include those perspectives, you end up with a rant. And I think you limit the potential of the piece for meaningful dialogue and change.”
It’s too easy to paint corporations as evil and rage against them with bricks tossed through windows. CEOs aren’t evil. They don’t benefit by destroying the planet. So, now is the time to stop rants and move the discussion forward.
I haven’t seen it yet, but by the sounds of it, The Corporation running at 2 1/2 hours sounds more like a discussion than a rant.
Now you just have to convince your right-wing neighbour to go see it.
(Thanks to Robert Paterson’s Weblog and davehyndman.com for putting me onto this movie with their posts.)
