A well put-together documentary that makes you think about the issues it discusses, with a couple of fatal flaws in its argument that make you love it or hate it, depending on your existing political affiliation. As a longstanding admirer of Milton Friedman, who is lambasted in this film as the economic "mad scientist" of Chile, I disliked it.
Pilger is successful at creating controversy and getting those vital emotional scenes in, but he very much shoots himself in the foot elsewhere. The fawning interview with Chavez (who Pilger, like Ken Livingstone, another old red, seems determined to defend at all costs)leaves a bad taste in the mouth, and indeed many of his scenes describing the bright new Venezuala (like the reading/writing class) give the appearance of state intervention.
Similiarly this film can be easily divided into "light" and "dark" scenes, the darkest being Pilger's descriptions of the USA, usually in front of Capitol looking ominous beneath a grey sky. It shouldn't surprise you the revolutionary rhetoric of the cold war makes an unwelcome re-appearance, America is guilty of ill-defined "imperialism". It's motives for wanting regime change in S. America aren't explored at all, besides a couple of tired old CIA veterans dragged into the light for re-examination of what we already know.
It's pure polemic in some sections, where Pilger abandons all notion of impartiality and speaks directly to the camera. Chile's success as one of the few countries in S. America with a viable non-distorted economy is explored only as far as its homeless problem, while the real reason Chavez's dystopian Venezuala is able to function, the billions in oil bucks handed to it every year by the US and other Western countries, is smoothed over. This style of reporting hasn't been around since the cold war, it's ideas from the decades of revolution (look what a success that was!) between 1940-70. It's my opinion that Pilger, like a lot of old lefties (Galloway, Livingstone, Pinter), was thrown askance by the the collapse of the USSR, and it has taken him, like them, a good deal of time to find their feet in a world which the dreaded capitalism has well and truly won. The re-appearance of any form of revolutionary socialism, no matter how authoritarian, has them jumping over one another to attack the USA and Latin America has become the new battleground. We were on the subject of exploitation....?
Pilger is successful at creating controversy and getting those vital emotional scenes in, but he very much shoots himself in the foot elsewhere. The fawning interview with Chavez (who Pilger, like Ken Livingstone, another old red, seems determined to defend at all costs)leaves a bad taste in the mouth, and indeed many of his scenes describing the bright new Venezuala (like the reading/writing class) give the appearance of state intervention.
Similiarly this film can be easily divided into "light" and "dark" scenes, the darkest being Pilger's descriptions of the USA, usually in front of Capitol looking ominous beneath a grey sky. It shouldn't surprise you the revolutionary rhetoric of the cold war makes an unwelcome re-appearance, America is guilty of ill-defined "imperialism". It's motives for wanting regime change in S. America aren't explored at all, besides a couple of tired old CIA veterans dragged into the light for re-examination of what we already know.
It's pure polemic in some sections, where Pilger abandons all notion of impartiality and speaks directly to the camera. Chile's success as one of the few countries in S. America with a viable non-distorted economy is explored only as far as its homeless problem, while the real reason Chavez's dystopian Venezuala is able to function, the billions in oil bucks handed to it every year by the US and other Western countries, is smoothed over. This style of reporting hasn't been around since the cold war, it's ideas from the decades of revolution (look what a success that was!) between 1940-70. It's my opinion that Pilger, like a lot of old lefties (Galloway, Livingstone, Pinter), was thrown askance by the the collapse of the USSR, and it has taken him, like them, a good deal of time to find their feet in a world which the dreaded capitalism has well and truly won. The re-appearance of any form of revolutionary socialism, no matter how authoritarian, has them jumping over one another to attack the USA and Latin America has become the new battleground. We were on the subject of exploitation....?