The Corporation
April 2005 Reviewed by: Marc Mickelson Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Imagine if General Electric, DaimlerChrysler, Nike, Monsanto, McDonald's and a host of other corporations were people. What kind of people would they be? As The Corporation points out, in the eyes of US law, corporations are people. They can buy and sell property, borrow money, and sue individuals as well each other. Unfortunately, they are also driven completely by the profit motive, so the social and moral principles that govern human behavior are not applicable to them. This leads to the problems we hear about every day: wide-scale pollution, white-collar crime, worker exploitation, disregard for safety -- disregard for everything except the bottom line.

The Corporation is a stylish, well-made documentary based on Joel Bakan's book of the same name. It is constructed rather like a video book, with interrelated segments that function as chapters. This approach works well, as this movie overflows with information and images. A major storytelling element is the interview, each done in front of a dark background in order to focus attention on the subject and his or her message. The interviews are interspersed with film clips that are sometimes straightforward narratives and sometimes off beat, even humorous. They broaden the film's message, making it more compelling, sobering, and chilling.

Filmmaker Michael Moore, linguist Noam Chomsky, writer Naomi Klein, and economist Milton Friedman help give a voice to this movie. But none of the many thinkers and businesspeople interviewed are as convincing as Ray Anderson, the thoughtful CEO and founder of Interface, the world's largest manufacturer of commercial carpet. His aim is for his company to be fully sustainable by 2020. Three dozen others also lend their knowledge, bulking out the profile of the modern corporation. What kind of people would corporations be? Psychopaths is the movie's provocative assessment.

The video image and sound are good, nothing out of the ordinary. However, the extra features of this two-DVD set are extraordinary. They include many additional interview clips and deleted scenes that are very much worth watching. There is a glitch with the cursor for the top menu on disc two -- it mysteriously disappears after ten seconds. Make your choice quickly or you'll have to reload the disc. Also, the DVD-ROM materials on the same disc took a bit of work to view on my laptop. You may have to locate and run the .EXE file on the disc.

As I watched The Corporation, one of my first thoughts was, "I hope this is shown in business schools." But as the movie points out, people do have power over corporate rule. They can alter governments and, moreover, subvert the all-important profit motive, using it against the corporation itself. "The rich man will sell you the rope to hang himself if he thinks he can make a buck off it," Michael Moore says. This refers to Moore's moviemaking, which flaunts his contempt for corporate power while existing in the midst of it. "I'm part of the rope."

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