The Shock Doctrine (2009)

Tonight on My 2011 in Movies- we get political with The Shock Doctrine, Mat Whitecross and Michael Winterbottom's documentry detailing Naomi Klein's best-selling book on socio-economics. I'm in a weird position these days where I'm working in a very political workplace and, though I take a generally above average interest in politics, i'm constantly challenging my own views on all facets of government now. The crux of The Shock Doctrine is the that of the work of an economist theorist called Milton Freeman,  has been been used to stablise economies by distabling them more or purposely halting growth first. For example, the bright spark of selling off and privatising your national business assets like utilities. This was started to be used by despotic dictatorships before it went on to be used by Thatcher and Reagan and then in Iraq, after that second mild skirmish. Urgh its always comes back to Bush in these documentaries, doesn't it?
What did blame shit on before him? I'm not sticking up for him-realllllly bad dude (and i mean that word precisely)  for leader of the free world but the fact 10's of millions voted him in twice is an inditement on democracy not him. Here's my socio-economics thesis- the proliferation of documentaries becoming widespread and theatrical entities would be nothing without George W. Bush. Bowling For Columbine with probably the first documentry you saw in the cinema and if it wasn't that it was Farenheight 911. But I digress... So where this economic model was designed to hard-reboot economies, Klein's thesis is that it only restarts the rich capitalising on the newly-poor poor, what she subs disaster-
Now I found this all interesting and provocative and I don't mind a documentary being provocative. I know documentaries are less the truth but stylised educated opinions, facts with a narrative. My point is you should take from it, what you find sincere and helpful like you should a religious text- not think it's all untenable truth. But my issue with the film is that, it doesn't have much to say and as much as I read No Logo and felt it was moany and one-sided, i'm sure The Shock Doctrine (book) is far more broad in its scope than this film portrays- it all seems like she wrote this sort of basic first year one note thesis, where she found a book on Milton Freedman somewhere and based her whole discourse on this theorist no one's thought about for a while. Like I say I'm no fan of hers but I give her more credit than that-which is not to say Klein is not prominently featured but the film can't seem whether it want to keep her narrative, which can be distant in message or to do the 'clips and Powerpoint' thing. In hindsight, the Klein narrative would have been better because it would have been harder to follow but it would have been better than what Whitecross and Winterbottom have done which is the equivalent of cinematic quantitative easing....

I watched The Shock Doctrine (2010) on LoveFilm Online.
My 2011 in Movies will return with 14 Swords (2009)...