“The Shock Doctrine” (2009) – Review #11
Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross, who have previously worked on “The Road to Guantanamo”, cast their attention on the work of Naomi Klein. We are in anti-Bush and anti-capitalism territory… which could get boring because we have seen it so many times. All my Red Flags go up with the fast pace of the editing and the extensive archive footage use, superficial descriptions of very complex, economic and historical concepts. Is this a good film? Yes. Is it objective (in any meaningful way): I seriously doubt it.
But Naomi is an intelligent (and gorgeous, which helps) woman who masters the art of discourse and this film gave me even more motivation to read her books. However, I can’t help feel that she was in the doc for name-value. For the first hour she played a minimal role.
The central idea of the film, as I understood it, is that shocking events lowers the public’s guard and allows new (economic) policies to be applied.
Ok, my 1 minute is up. If liked the directors or any anit-Bush dox, you’ll probably like this one. If not, you’ll at least appreciate the editing and the research which went into creating it.
Here’s a short film Naomi Klein made. I presume it’s what inspired the directors to make “The Shock Doctrine”.
IMDB: 7 of 10 (65 votes) / more info / 90 minutes
Directed by: Mat Whitecross and Michael Winterbottom
See the Lovedox ranking for this film!
[...] fun to watch. “The Cove” was fun and entertaining and achieves its objective. “Shock Doctrine” is the sort of political doc that I thought directors stopped making after Bush left the [...]
Looking forward to seeing this, maybe at Hot Docs. As I understand, Naomi Klein has distanced herself from the final film (based on her excellent book of the same title) due to differences with Winterbottom. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was over the editing, etc. The book is a door-stopper but completely gripping. Well-researched and convincing. It doesn’t need to be dumbed-down and simplified. It’s more an indictment of neo-liberal economics than anything specifically anti-Bush, so it will always be timely.
Thanks for your review, and all the other CPH:DOX ones (hope to get there one day!)
Hi James,
You are right, Naomi Klein actually disowned the film and has been asked to be removed from the credits.
Not sure if this played a role in her decision, but I did find her role in the film strangely detached from the rest of the narrative. We see her giving a lecture tour around the US, which breaks the rhythm of the rest of the film. Anyway, she does say that:
“As often happens, we had different ideas about how to tell this story and build the argument. This is Michael’s adaptation of my book, and I didn’t want there to be any confusion about that. I wish the film success.”
I had another read of the Wikipedia entry for the Shock Doctrine and have added the book to my to-read list.
P.S. Drop me a line if you manage to attend CPH:DOX some day