Is the world economy nuts?

A B.C. filmmaker questions the very sanity of the conglomerates that control our lives.

By ALEXANDRA GILL

Globe & Mail http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040110/ACHBAR10//?query=bakan
UPDATED AT 12:39 PM EST Saturday, Jan. 10, 2004

VANCOUVER -- Mark Achbar tromps across the snowy street, glasses fogged, bundled up in fleece and an enormous fuzzy hat with a magenta faux-fur coon tail dangling halfway down his back. Appropriate attire, it would seem, for the Davy Crockett of the left.

If only this flash Vancouver blizzard hadn't prevented us from meeting at the Four Seasons. Can you imagine the bewildered looks when Achbar -- a multi-award-winning, endearingly eccentric documentary filmmaker hailing from Canada's Wild West -- had stormed the bastion of conservative business lunches in his freakish getup?

Stop imagining and start fortifying the barricades.

Nightmare on Bay Street, as Canadian Business magazine has nervously coined Achbar's latest celluloid manifesto, is coming next week, likely to a multiplex near you. The Corporation, co-directed by Jennifer Abbott, and based on an upcoming book, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by UBC law professor Joel Bakan, is a devastating critique of business ethics that questions the sanity of the world's most dominant institution.

Using a so-called personality diagnostic checklist based on the criteria of the World Health Organization, and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (a standard tool for psychiatrists and psychologists), the film argues that the institutional embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism perfectly matches the criteria of a psychopath -- self-interested, amoral, callous and deceitful.

From there, it looks at four case studies to illustrate how the corporation's unbridled self-interest has harmed individuals, democracy and the environment. It then presents alternative options and possible methods of resistance (or in the film's parlance, "psychotherapies and prognosis").

While some might dismiss The Corporation as another left-wing diatribe -- and the filmmakers have no qualms about stating their biases -- the corporate community has good reason to be skittish. With numerous awards already under its belt, sold-out screenings at film festivals and an upcoming mention in Vanity Fair, the documentary is shaping up to become the Canadian buzz film of the year.

Many reviews have noted that in the wake of the dot-com crash, the fraudulent collapse of politically connected Enron, 9/11, ongoing World Trade Organization protests and the war in Iraq -- not to mention the wild success of anything created by rabble-rousing author and documentary maker Michael Moore -- The Corporation could not be more perfectly timed.

Achbar, however, is quick to point out how different the climate felt when he and his fellow filmmakers began working on their documentary six years ago. "When we started, the corporation was in its ascendance. It wasn't always reviled as this scandal-ridden entity. The stock market was booming and corporations could do no wrong. CEOs were huge cultural heroes.

"And then the APEC protest came along, which we here in North America would perhaps pinpoint as the first indication that there was a consciousness about global capitalist institutions, and that became the focus of protest. It was a much broader critique than we had seen before.

"But," he adds, "I always thought, 'Corporate power isn't going away any time soon, so any time is a good time to release this film.' "

And what kind of people spend six years exploring the psychopathic tendencies of an inanimate institution? Achbar jokingly admits there have been times when he and his colleagues (more than 100 people worked on the film) did question their own sanity. "When you set out on a project like this, you don't anticipate it's going to take six years," he notes. "You set out in a state of conscious denial."

Despite initial resistance from broadcasters and funding agencies, Achbar and co-producer Bart Simpson were eventually able to raise the $1.39-million budget. Later this year, the film be shown in three 58-minute segments on TVOntario and Vision.

If the early response is any indication, The Corporation will likely enjoy even more mainstream success than Manufacturing Consent, the biography of media critic Noam Chomsky, which Achbar co-directed with Peter Wintonick. That 1992 film still stands as the most successful feature documentary in Canadian history, having won 20 international awards and grossing more than $1.2-million in box-office revenue after screening in 300 locations worldwide.

Certainly The Corporation has been raking in kudos, including people's choice awards at festivals in Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. The Toronto International Film Festival Group named it one of the Top 10 films of 2003. At the International Film Festival of Amsterdam, the Cannes of documentary festivals, it won the Special Jury Award.

On Jan. 17, the day after it opens in Canada, the film gets its U.S. premiere at Sundance, where three of four screenings are already sold out. And in March, Achbar will be featured in Vanity Fair's prestigious Hollywood issue.

Despite all that, the director retains an almost childlike excitement about the project. "We even have a trailer!" he exclaims. "Just like a real movie. It's playing in front of Cold Mountain and The Statement."

At 2½ hours, such a big think piece could have been bum-numbing. But thanks to Abbot's creative editing, the unwieldy subject has been shaped into an entertaining and cogent critique. CBC News likened it to "the best issue of Harper's Magazine, set to music."

The interview subjects include all the usual lefty crowd (alongside Moore and Chomsky are Canadians Naomi Klein and Maude Barlow). Achbar, however, deliberately provides equal time -- and respect -- to the other side, allowing CEOs, right-wing economists and business lobbyists enough rope to bolster the film's claims, and even present some of its most damning indictments.

"It's one thing for Maude Barlow to say governments have no power, and corporations are taking over the world," says Achbar. "It's another thing for the CEO of Goodyear to say the same thing. That was one of the strategies -- to have those kinds of facts be stated by people from the business world.

"They're true, but now they're somehow more convincing to a certain demographic, and I think it's very important to reach that demographic, which is why we have Milton Friedman explaining the fundamentals of externalities. It's not some Marxist scholar's wacky theory. If you don't give space and respect and time to points of view that you don't necessarily agree with, and you don't include those perspectives, you end up with a rant. And I think you limit the potential of the piece for meaningful dialogue and change."

Indeed, the dialogue has already begun. To Achbar's astonishment, he was recently approached by an associate professor of the University of Western Ontario's Richard Ivey School of Business; Tima Bansal is planning to use the film as the basis for a curriculum unit on corporate social responsibility, and make her study guide available to other business schools.

Whether we're Bay Street brokers or environmental socialists, Achbar believes, we're all concerned about our "collective complicity" in the destruction of the planet. "I don't think we want to ruin the Earth for future generations. Most sane, reasonable people do care."

Call him insane, but Achbar was actually impressed with many of the CEOs he met. "They're very charming," he says, speaking like someone who has just met an alien species. "At the end of some of these interviews," he laughs, "I was ready to buy stock."

Achbar was particularly impressed with Ray Anderson, the chairman of Interface Inc., an international carpet manufacturer that has committed itself to redesigning its manufacturing processes and products so that it will soon use only recycled products. The immensely likable chairman is, in effect, the star of the film.

Achbar is cautious, however, about the lesson Anderson imparts, lest anyone get too excited. "We cannot rely on the CEOs of the world all having epiphanies while simultaneously reading Paul Hawkins's The Ecology of Commerce," a book that chronicles the abuse of the Earth at the hands of the capitalist elite. "It's not going to happen," says Achbar of such an idealistic turnaround. "One way or another, corporations must be forced into sustainability, or else we are collectively doomed."