2004 Sundance Film Festival World Cinema Audience Award Documentary
I was hoping for more; but a catalogue of antisocial unecological and selfish acts performed by certain businesses is difficult to present in an interesting way. To present it as a sociopathic person is just not enough.
As someone who likes documentaries I found this to be a real disappointment. What portrays itself as a look at the growth of corporations and how they affect each of our lives is little more than a 144 minute attack on corporate industry and globalisation all wrapped up in slick presentation and editing. After a brief history on the first corporate companies the documentary soon descends into a one sided attack on corporations, their dubious business practices and the negative effects they have on society, intercut with opinions and true life stories from various experts and members of the public, most of which have personal reasons to air a grudge against some company that once employed them. While this may be fair comment the documentary fails as it never shows the flip-side of the argument, it no one every expresses an opinion of how a corporation has improved their life, or how a corporation ever improved a society. Various large corporations are spotlighted and shown to be ruthless and morally questionable, but it's never mentions that the third largest corporation in the world is the British NHS, or that the second is the Indian Railways. And companies that try to show that they have a moral conscience and a sense of being part of society are often sidelined and mocked, in one segment a spokesman for a large company proudly shows the film crew around an low income area with a past high crime rate, which had been regenerated to provide a better living environment for the local population, the local community seemed happy with the improvement but only the negatives were highlighted and the spokesman was purposefully mocked and made look foolish. Overall, 'The Coporation' is disappointing, misleading, unfairly biased, boring and clocking in at over two and a half hours it's far too long. One to miss.