The Big One

A documentary shot during a book tour. Michael Moore travels across America to promote his new book. Forty-seven cities, buses, bookshops and signing queues. But he is doing something else. In every city he goes to he looks for a factory closing at that moment. The picture he finds is the same. The company announces a profit, the share price rises, and production moves out of the country. From there the film turns into a series of visits. He walks into a corporate headquarters, talks to a public relations officer, asks for the executive, and is shown out. The method is always the same. The camera is on, the question is simple, and it is known that the other side cannot answer it. The bookshop scenes are the other half. People who have been laid off come to the microphone and tell their own stories. What the narrative is interested in is not unemployment but justification: the film shows that companies move not because they are losing money but to make more, and it does that with their own figures. Its best known section is an interview. The head of a sports shoe company agrees to appear on camera and is asked about manufacturing in Indonesia. During the interview the executive is offered a plane ticket. He refuses to go and see the factory but promises to stop hiring fourteen year olds. Humour is the narrative's instrument. Moore puts himself on stage and some sections are built for the joke. Michael Moore directed and narrates. Who it is for: anyone curious about Moore's method and the argument about work in 1990s America. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a neutral study; the film openly takes a side and its editing reinforces that.