Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, is a somewhat valiant attempt by Robert Greenwald to put into a coherent picture what it is that makes Wal-Mart such an overbearing presence as a conglomeration and ultimate capitalist (or maybe more likely fascist) entity. It goes something like this: the independent businesses that serve at the pleasure of small towns can't keep up with the competition that a HUGE Wal-Mart imposes and closes down; the same towns, in the subsidizing that goes on, end up losing out on what makes a town a town, and it even encroaches into education (schools shut down); the employees work for crap wages, get no real medical insurance or health-care, and there is discrimination as well as no real care for what the wages should be as opposed to cheating the workers of overtime pay; the international impact, workers in factories in China and Wal-Mart employees in Germany; and finally the impact of the consumer's safety *within* security camera sight in the parking lots. In shot, Greenwald's expose is meant to be a bitter, bi-partisan pill to swallow (albeit some conservatives, of course, will look at what Wal-Mart represents, as did the Republican National Convention which invited the CEO to speak) for anyone interested in what may be dangerous about something as immense a profit-machine as Wal-Mart.
Through all of this, Greenwald gets usually impassioned testimonies from past workers, small-town farmers and store owners that had to close up and look elsewhere for money, and even those who succeeded in stopping Wal-Mart coming into town. His stylistic tactics might be a little less gripping as the people he gets on camera; his editing taste is pretty simplistic as a documentary filmmaker, and unlike other documentaries he's made his taste in music choices are a little emotionally over-bearing or too manipulative for the moment meant to be caught. There is also something that is sort of lacking in the documentary which is a more incisive look at why the consumer gives Wal-Mart so much business. Is it truly the low prices? I think it's something a little more complex, and it is maybe wisely kept to a subtle level given how much Greeenwald gets in 97 minutes: there is a comfort factor, something almost meant to condition the consumer, with a Wal-Mart. Who needs to go to this place and that place and the other in a town to get everything done, when a Wal-Mart has everything needed, from groceries to auto work and hardware? It's a level of complacency that isn't always totally comforting, however, as those who've been victims of crimes in the parking lots would say (and just in 2005 alone), or those in other countries who work slave wages for said comforts at home.
Bottom-line, this Wal-Mart documentary doesn't present many things that most informed about what the corporation is all about won't already know (certain things, like the subsidizing and its full effects, or the environmental damage, are fresh and appropriately critical), but it does act as a meaningful portrait of the truths that the ads would never live up to, and if anything contradicts everything in a typical Wal-Mart ad. What it lacks in anything striking visually it compensates with its relatable human drama on the levels that should matter to Wal-Mart, but never will.
Through all of this, Greenwald gets usually impassioned testimonies from past workers, small-town farmers and store owners that had to close up and look elsewhere for money, and even those who succeeded in stopping Wal-Mart coming into town. His stylistic tactics might be a little less gripping as the people he gets on camera; his editing taste is pretty simplistic as a documentary filmmaker, and unlike other documentaries he's made his taste in music choices are a little emotionally over-bearing or too manipulative for the moment meant to be caught. There is also something that is sort of lacking in the documentary which is a more incisive look at why the consumer gives Wal-Mart so much business. Is it truly the low prices? I think it's something a little more complex, and it is maybe wisely kept to a subtle level given how much Greeenwald gets in 97 minutes: there is a comfort factor, something almost meant to condition the consumer, with a Wal-Mart. Who needs to go to this place and that place and the other in a town to get everything done, when a Wal-Mart has everything needed, from groceries to auto work and hardware? It's a level of complacency that isn't always totally comforting, however, as those who've been victims of crimes in the parking lots would say (and just in 2005 alone), or those in other countries who work slave wages for said comforts at home.
Bottom-line, this Wal-Mart documentary doesn't present many things that most informed about what the corporation is all about won't already know (certain things, like the subsidizing and its full effects, or the environmental damage, are fresh and appropriately critical), but it does act as a meaningful portrait of the truths that the ads would never live up to, and if anything contradicts everything in a typical Wal-Mart ad. What it lacks in anything striking visually it compensates with its relatable human drama on the levels that should matter to Wal-Mart, but never will.