Capital

Costa-Gavras – 2012 – France

I’ve only seen a handful of Costa-Gavras’ films, so I can’t comment on how Capital fits in with his oeuvre.  I found it very interesting all the way through, but it sort of works in spite of itself.  It’s a virulently, almost hysterically, anti-capitalist film, of course, but it doesn’t offer much original in the way of arguments about economic systems.  The message seems to be something fairly college-freshman-activist sounding along the lines of “capitalism is inherently evil and therefore attracts conscienceless people” or “capitalism is evil and therefore corrupts otherwise good people” or “capitalism is a Godzilla-like monster that flattens good and evil folk indiscriminately.”  Take your pick.  Its structure is a little over-familiar by this point too, derived from the Richard III approach of having a villainous hero confiding directly to the audience, but even so, it’s no less enjoyable at times for being overdone.  (We’ve also seen it in the American TV series Profit and Dexter, as well as both the British and American versions of House of Cards.)  Marc Tourneuil (Gad Elmaleh) is a greedy and conniving banker who is promoted to the CEO’s chair when cancer incapacitates his predecessor.  The board of directors are merely using him as a placeholder, but, being the clever Machiavellian that he is, he has ideas of his own on how to outsmart them all and keep the power for himself.  A soulless creature, he frequently states that the accumulation of money is his only goal in life.  Like him, the film itself is pretty one-dimensional in this regard, not having the courage to engage an opposing view, to allow debate, or to risk any challenge to its unambiguous position.  By working “in spite of itself,” I meant that Marc is so driven and up against such daunting odds that it’s hard not to root for him, regardless of his morals and despite the fact that there is nothing very endearing about him at all.  I think that with a little more complexity, Gavras might have had a near-masterpiece on his hands here instead of a somewhat compelling boardroom drama that works best if you can filter out the obtuse harangues about the evils of capitalism.