Review of The Corporation (2003) by Joshua L — 29 Jan 2012

A two and a half hour documentary on the history and development of the American corporation and how it achieved its current state of world domination might seem like a recipe for a very dry and dull movie experience. Not at all. I was riveted from beginning to end. I checked my watch a couple of times because I couldn't believe that such a stunning pitch could be maintained for so long.

There are almost too many powerful scenes to recall. The major one for me is the psychiatrist listing the traits of a psychopath and having every single one of them checked off as perfectly describing a corporation (since a corporation is legally a person). A Corporate CEO describing how what he does should be illegal.....and he can't believe it's not. The news reporters who were fired from FOX for not agreeing to report a lie.

To dismiss this as merely "left-wing scaremongering" is missing the point. What this film presents are facts about who has real power in the modern world, and every citizen who gives a damn about the future of the world we live in has a duty to educate themselves as to what it is being done in the name of enormous financial gains for a very small elite of unbelievably greedy and selfish men.

One of the "subplots" that didn't make the final cut was about a children's festival where the Canadian singer/ children's entertainer Raffi was due to give a concert. Upon entering the festival, parents were greeted by a mocked-up KIA car showroom that would inevitably get the children excited as they were allowed to play in the cars, whilst being given KIA merchandise. The presence of this corporate employment of children pester power to be directed at their parents so disgusted Raffi that he pulled out of the concert. One of the reasons this segment was not included was that the film-makers were denied the opportunity to film the KIA showroom, and the handheld footage that they shot secretly wasn't good enough to be used in the final film.

There is waaay too much in here to describe it all. Just go see it.