THE BIG ONE (Miramax - 1998) Produced by Kathleen Glynn Directed by Michael Moore Running time: 96 minutes
**1/2 (out of four stars)
Alternate Rating: B-
Note: Some may consider portions of the following text to be spoilers. Be forewarned.
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It's not too difficult to like Michael Moore, creator of the highly successful documentary ROGER & ME who returns with his similarly-themed follow-up, THE BIG ONE. His intrinsic appeal to his many fans is fairly obvious -- he's the proverbial fly in the ointment to corporate America, the underdog crusader challenging and confronting big business on behalf of the downtrodden working class. It's easy to garnish the audience's support in an Us vs. Them polemic, particularly when Mr. Moore labels the Them as the powerful, faceless downsizing corporations across America, while the Us is depicted as the sad, desperate faces of the newly-unemployed; when forced to choose to empathise with either the wealthy industry bigwig or the struggling factory worker with bills to pay and hungry mouths to feed, it's far too easy to recognize ourselves in the latter.
Mr. Moore himself does a good job as coming across as an Everyman, with his portly, cheerful, insidiously mischievous demeanor, his infectious grin, his omnipresent baseball cap, and his propensity not to take himself too seriously. One can immediately tell, however, that he takes the topic of downsizing very seriously, and in THE BIG ONE, while sent on a whirlwind cross-country tour in 1996 to promote his book "Downsize This! Random Threats From An Unarmed American", Mr. Moore and a makeshift skeletal film crew took the opportunity to film this irreverent guerrilla documentary on the effects of corporate downsizing. His approach? In addition to including testimonials on the unfairness of the situation from newly-downsized workers (corporations are already reaping huge profits, yet are nonetheless relocating their plants abroad, where cheaper labour abounds), Mr. Moore seemingly-innocously ambled unannounced into front foyers of many downsizing corporate headquarters across the country and created scenes by demanding justification for the layoffs, preferably from a CEO.
His confrontational approach, though, is decidedly more caustic than vitriolic: Mr. Moore typically comes bearing gifts, albeit dubious ones -- "Downsizer Of The Year" award certificates, oversized cheques for eighty cents ("the first hour's wages for a Mexican worker"). Bane of corporate America -- one company even issued an internal memorandum instructing its staff how to address the situation should he pay them an uninvited visit -- Mr. Moore's essentially the working man's shit-disturber, ambushing greedy big businesses and holding them up for ridicule, all the while remaining eminently polite and good-natured; forced out of one office building, he calls out through the glass window to the staff member manning the front desk, "You tricked me!" in a tone of bemused indignity.
Although these showdowns are occasionally amusing, they tend do lose their bite after repetition as Mr. Moore pulls the same stunt in city after city. Curiously, as the film progressed I found my own sympathies lying more and more towards the corporate security guards being awkwardly put in the position of attempting to quell his instigations; what did these working men ever do to deserve this? And Mr. Moore even shows an mean-spirited side in a prank on one of the media escorts assigned by his publisher to accompany and assist him at his book signings; while she's being forcibly ejected from the premises by a security guard misinformed that she's a stalker, the person next to me in the theatre choked out "That's so mean!" in between her chortles of laughter. I agreed, although I wasn't laughing. After the joke is finally revealed, we get a close-up of the humiliated media escort who's been simply doing her job (she was actually fetching Mr. Moore a soda at his bequest when she was promptly expelled), grinning and bearing it; behind her gritted teeth, you know that deep down she's ready to belt the guy.
Where THE BIG ONE is at its best is when Mr. Moore interacts with other people and unearths surprising and often superficially-shocking bits of inanity: he gets a manager of a Payday candy bar plant being relocated from Centralia, Illinois to Mexico to state on-camera that the move would've been delayed had the employees been *less* productive; he finds a convicted murderer who reveals that TWA is using low-paid California prison inmates to provide information to callers on the airline's 1-800 number. The mind boggles.
The film culminates in Seattle, where Mr. Moore is *invited* for a one-on-one session with Nike Inc. CEO Phil Knight. When asked why Nike's factories are based in Asia rather than in the U.S., Mr. Knight responds "Americans don't really want to make shoes," and perhaps he has a point; no amount of low-angle camera shots that Mr. Moore employs successfully hides the fact that the group of Flint, Michigan hopefuls rallied to convince Nike in setting up a hometown shoe factory falls well short of the 500 promised. In retrospect, his pleas for an American-based factory, all the while admitting that its margin of profitability would be less than that of a foreign-based plant, is disturbing in how much it resembles as a plea for charity. The meeting grows quickly inane after Mr. Knight sensibly points out that any unemployed worker sufficiently desperate will attest to a desire to work in any sort of profession, upon which Mr. Moore challenges the corporate bigwig with a footrace, and then an armwrestle for a Flint Nike plant.
THE BIG ONE is an unabashed pro-labour, pro-union advocacy piece, and Mr. Moore's tirades against big industry make for engaging soundbites. Even if one doesn't agree with Mr. Moore's ideologies, the film is still entertaining, humorous, and quick-paced. THE BIG ONE weaves in and out of wickedly funny excerpts from Mr. Moore's sociopolitical speaking tours monologues (a key target: the unblinking Steve Forbes), and savvy editing is employed to elicit maximum effect from the many contradictions and absurdities stumbled across. It's an argumentative and provocative film which plays as a romp as much as it does a lecture.
There's a little irony buried within the film which I couldn't help but enjoy. So when anti-big business, pro-union Michael Moore is on the road and gets the munchies, where does he get his crew to pull over? Why, at McDonald's, of course; gotta have that Filet-O-Fish.
- Alex Fung
email: aw220@freenet.carleton.ca
web : http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~aw220/
-- Alex Fung (aw220@freenet.carleton.ca) | http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~aw220/ "Sometimes, I have an overwhelming temptation to grab someone by the throat, head-butt them, leave them bleeding in the corner, saying 'That is my critical response to you.'" - NSFC award-winning director Mike Figgis
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