All alone confronting Goliath

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

For a film that was aimed as a searing indictment of big business, The Corporation is a major success -- so successful that it has been adopted by the business establishment as a marker in their soul-searching campaign.

A box office documentary film in the same league as Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. It grossed over US$6 million worldwide and won 24 awards including one at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, copies of The Corporation are now held in libraries in hundreds of business schools in North America and have been screened in master of business administration (MBA) classes attended by future CEOs.

The film, released in 2003, has also been broadcast on dozens of television stations across the globe.

The success of The Corporation has in a way changed the life of its maker, Canadian film director Mark Achbar.

Although he never came close to becoming a corporate person himself, Achbar has adopted some of the methods often used by traveling businesspeople.

After a long conversation with The Jakarta Post at the Canadian Embassy, the energetic director handed out a name card bearing the logo of his film -- a yellow silhouette of a man in a suit with an angelic halo above his head and a devil's tail behind his back -- giving a slight impression that the film has been turned into a corporate entity.

Beneath his brown jacket, Achbar wore a black T-shirt adorned with the same imprint.

The way Achbar dresses today is a radical departure from his former sartorial preferences.

Achbar was in the city early last week to promote The Corporation to audiences at the Jakarta International Film Festival (JiFFest).

Forensic examination of big business

The Corporation as a film is also a walking contradiction, for the box-office certification, business travel and changing sartorial style however are a product of dissecting and attacking the monstrous institution of the modern era that is the corporation.

The film explores the nature and spectacular rise of big business -- including the McDonald's fast-food chain, GAP clothing company, Coca Cola, Goodyear tire company and even Fox News Channel.

The film interviews 40 individuals, from leftist pundit Noam Chomsky, Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, liberal filmmaker Michael Moore, author and political activist Naomi Klein to chairman of Royal Dutch Shell Sir Mark Moody-Stuart and former chief executive officer and chairman of Goodyear Tire, Sam Gibara.

Held to be responsible for countless cases of illness, death, poverty, pollution, exploitation and lies, corporations are portrayed in the film as being psychopathic -- entities that are self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful.

Corporations breach social and legal standards to get their way; they do not suffer from guilt, yet can mimic the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism.

All fit the definition "psychopath" provided by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Despite its weighty subject the film was destined to be a success, by dint of its groundbreaking technique and meticulous research.

Based on a written project of the same title by law professor Joel Bakan, material from the film later made up a great deal of chapters in a new book.

Interviews from the films would be quoted in the book, whilst a great deal of writing from the book became narration for the film.

Both the book and the film were completed at the same time after six years of preparation.

In the latter stages of production, along came Jennifer Abbot, who lent a hand with the film's editing.

For Achbar, the film was the ultimate product of what he experienced as corporate "claustrophobia".

"Every aspect of our lives is being impinged upon or affected in some way by this corporate thing, whether it be the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the car we drive or the places we go to. At a certain point it all became a little claustrophobic and I needed to do something about it," said Achbar, who wishes to be identified as a radical leftist.

Everything's up for grabs

The film was also the culmination of his derision for big business, whose desire for profit has reached an alarming rate.

Parts of the film show that today, every molecule on the planet is up for grabs. In a bid to own it all, corporations are patenting animals, plants, even deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) codes.

Another example of such corporate greed is that even the rights to the song Happy Birthday are now held by a company owned by media giant AOL-Time-Warner.

The Corporation was just a stopover by Achbar during his project to make provocative films.

In his 30-year independent filmmaking career, Achbar has produced some of the most incendiary documentary films in Canada, including The Canadian Conspiracy, a cultural/political satire for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation screened on HBO's Comedy Experiments, and Two Brides and A Scalpel: Diary of a Lesbian Marriage, a comi-tragic tale of Canada's first same-sex marriage.

Achbar hit pay dirt, however, when he produced Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and The Media, a documentary film that delves into the political life and ideas of Chomsky.

In the film, Achbar argues that corporate media, as profit- driven institutions, tend to serve and further the agendas of the interests of dominant, elite groups in society. The film's centerpiece was reluctance by The New York Times to cover Indonesia's occupation of East Timor in the mid-1970s.

Consent also served as Achbar's homage to Chomsky, whom he said had greatly influenced his political thinking.

Attending college in Syracuse, New York, and diligently protesting against Reagan's nuclear programs in the early 1980s, Achbar ingested Chomsky's view to galvanize his political stance.

"He literally changed the way I think about the world and power. He challenged everything that I regarded as the norm; I heard little from him that is incorrect," the 50-year old said.

His political views were also shaped by the newspaper that Chomsky has berated so often, The New York Times.

"Reading the Times on a daily basis is enough to change your political perspective," he said.

On the net: www.thecorporation.com www.madman.com