Product Description

Mixing dark humor with dramatic fact, this breathtaking documentary examines the immeasurable impact that big business has had on contemporary life. Through a presentation of company histories, boardroom secrets, and interviews with Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, and others, a hilarious--and frightening--look at the machinations of the corporate world is revealed. 145 min. Widescreen (Enhanced); Soundtrack: English; audio commentary; bonus footage; deleted scenes; interviews; featurettes; theatrical trailers. Two-disc set.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17489 in DVD
• Brand: Zeitgeist Films
• Released on: 2005-04-05
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Formats: Color, DVD, Special Edition, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish, French
• Dimensions: .40 pounds
• Running time: 145 minutes

Amazon.com
An epic in length and breadth, this documentary aims at nothing less than a full-scale portrait of the most dominant institution on the planet Earth in our lifetime--a phenomenon all the more remarkable, if not downright frightening, when you consider that the corporation as we know it has been around for only about 150 years. It used to be that corporations were, by definition, short-lived and finite in agenda. If a town needed a bridge built, a corporation was set up to finance and complete the project; when the bridge was an accomplished fact, the corporation ceased to be. Then came the 19th-century robber barons, and the courts were prevailed upon to define corporations not as get-the-job-done mechanisms but as persons under the 14th Amendment with full civil rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (i.e., power and profit)--ad infinitum.

The Corporation defines this endlessly mutating life-form in exhaustive detail, measuring the many ways it has not only come to dominate but to deform our reality. The movie performs a running psychoanalysis of this entity with the characteristics of a prototypical psychopath: a callous unconcern for the feelings and safety of others, an incapacity to experience guilt, an ingrained habit of lying for profit, etc. We are swept away on a demented odyssey through an altered cosmos, in which artificial chemicals are created for profit and incidentally contribute to a cancer epidemic; in which the folks who brought us Agent Orange devise a milk-increasing drug for a world in which there is already a glut of milk; in which an American computer company leased its systems to the Nazis--and serviced them on a monthly basis--so that the Holocaust could go forward as an orderly process.

The movie goes on too long, circles too many points obsessively and redundantly, and risks preaching-to-the-choir reductiveness by calling on the usual talking-head suspects--Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Michael Moore. And except for an endlessly receding tracking shot in an infinite patents archive, there's scarcely an image worth recalling. Still, it maps the new reality. This is our world--welcome to it. --Richard T. Jameson

From The New Yorker
America's dominant institution gets a thorough "Frontline"-like going over in this documentary based on Joel Bakan's best-selling exposé. The film looks at corporations as legal entities and examines their manipulative business practices in interviews with C.E.O.s, whistle-blowers, and media figures such as Naomi Klein, Michael Moore, Ray Anderson, and Noam Chomsky. And, in what turns out to be a depressingly accurate observation, the filmmakers compare the behavior of corporations to that of psychopaths. Despite constant revelations, the film's nearly two-and-a-half-hour running time is exhausting-that's a lot of bad news to process. -Bruce Diones
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

The New York Times
"A monster movie! Smart!Fascinating! The topic is intricate and global and [the filmmakers] address it with spiky, dogged intelligence. A dense, complicated and thought-provoking film!"

"Fast-paced, highly enjoyable and provocative!"

"Five stars! A terrific film! Fascinating! Cogent! Compelling! Powerful!"