Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Capital

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Posted by Gerard S. Cohen (Member # 994) on 11-11-2013, 05:05 PM:

Nov.10, 2013 at the Kew Gardens Theatre, NYC, Screen 5

This film by Costa-Gavras is in French and some English dialog, with English sub-titles.

Marc, an ambitious intellectual, has been rising in a French international bank and suddenly is chosen to be its CEO. He then faces a series of crises as he attempts to express his altruism in his control of the corporation while defending himself against enemies within and abroad.

The power struggle widens to include multi-national banks, heads of governments, international regulators, and even a super-model whore. Action proceeds with increasing speed, filmed in the poshest locations of office suites, hotels, restaurants and resorts of the super-rich.

I found the filming, casting and dialog clean, sharp and superb!
The film is intensely realistic and timely, as though scripted from today's Wall Street Journal or The New York Times. The value of (other people's) money, honesty, family in a world of greed and cynicism is constantly questioned, and as viewer I was eager to see how Marc's new position of power would affect him, and his
sympathies for the 99% of the population of the world.

After seeing this film, I awoke at 3:00 AM and turned on my radio tuned to the Bloomberg station. The news reports of the mass firing of 5,000 employees and how it was predicted to raise the value of stock shares seemed a continuation of the script of CAPITAL, in which that very process is discussed with figures of six and ten thousands of firings and the percentages of resulting stock values. What a film for our time!