The Light of Day

Review: The Corporation
KeithHandy posted in Reviews on February 13th, 2007

Any CD I listen to, any film I watch, any book I read (don’t say it, Christy!), has to find me via some pathway into my life. Usually that pathway involves another person I know, via a direct recommendation, a few mentions in passing (if two or more people make mention a film, album, or artist under separate circumstances, it becomes exponentially more “significant” in my subconscious), seeing it in a friend’s collection, hearing it mentioned in comparision to (or grouped with) something I’m already familiar with, having it handed to me to borrow, or having someone just plain put it right on and expose me to it directly. From there, other pathways involve natural connections to what I’m familiar with, such as more work by the same artists, or something those artists talk about.

For all of these paths, it’s logical that I would know at least a few other people who are familiar with it too, so that I can discuss, critique, compare notes, and generally “geek”. Subsequently, one thing that sets The Corporation apart for me is that no one I’ve talked to has ever heard of it. Surely with good reason — as sick as you are of hearing cliches like “the movie THEY don’t want you to see”, this is in fact the movie they don’t want you to see.

I found it on Wikipedia; I was reading up on corporations in general in order to come to better terms with some of the frustration and angst I cope with at my day job, as well as outside of the job as my mental space is polluted with branding and advertising, the people I interact with on a daily basis are inundated with deeply disempowering and life-trivializing messages, and my conscience is strained by the necessity to buy goods and services without knowing exactly what I’m supporting and financing. Upon finding the film, my immediate reaction was “why have I not heard of this?”

While I certainly didn’t need to see a movie to put a bad taste in my mouth about modern corporations, and while this film will certainly do little other than preach to the choir, I’m finding it to be more intense and engrossing than I expected for a documentary, and I daresay even entertaining — in an adrenaline-boosting, get-off-on-getting-pissed-off kind of way — and in the end, there is some hope.

It’s a two-disc set with tons of extras that I haven’t begun to scratch the surface of. While I can’t begin to get into detail about all the people who appear, I will mention that a certain Michael Moore appears a few times in a refreshingly soft-spoken demeanor.

I tend to lack words beyond that when it comes to reviewing films, except let me be that first person to recommend it to you. It’s an important and kind of all-encompassing issue, the basic premise being that corporations are given nearly unlimited legal rights and yet have no conscience, even if the humans running them would otherwise be perfectly decent people (which is often the case). The entity, the “legal fictional person”, exhibits the traits of a psychopath, due to its sole guiding force being the quarterly bottom line.

And now if one other person mentions the film to you in a separate circumstance…