Part 1 of The Corporation is the build-up. You listen to them talk about the origin of corporations, and notions like sense of community. You're sympathetic, but at times it seems a tad too idealistic, and moralistic, and vague.Then Part 2 starts, and all the threads regarding corporate greed and destructive nature come together, and it's like someone front-kicks you in the solar plexus full-force, because the sudden and total horror of it all makes it hard to breathe. You realize where Part 1 was going with all of its sentiments, and it's a shock. There are a couple of moments when it seems like you can see all of social reality as the true Hell.What really got to me was the patenting of human and other genes by corporations. Did you know about this? In a nutshell, in 1980 an industrial chemist went to patent a microbe he cooked up in a lab, and after a brief fight, the judges, - obviously ignorant of stuff like biology, but authorized and ready to make rulings on biological issues nonetheless, - ultimately allowed this. After that, for more than 3 decades, companies in USA have been busy cutting out bits of the human genome, and getting patents on individual genes. Yup, it's insane, I know. The most they do is cut out the introns (extra bits interspersed with the gene) - and then say: "We own this". Well, imagine that companies would have patented organelles in human body cells when scientists first gained the capability to go that small? Patenting of genes is the same thing! (I'll do a small October 2014 update for you: The only small consolation is that The Corporation was made in 2003, and a decade later, - in 2013, - the US Supreme Court finally ruled that individual genes cannot be patented. The reason: the company Myriad owned patents on certain cancer-related genes, and was therefore the only entity legally allowed to work with those genes in ways like running prophylactic tests. Neat, right?However, the Supreme Court judges still showed considerable ignorance of the issues, - souring the potential victory of common sense in the ruling, - because they added: "cDNA can be patented...cDNA does not present the same obstacles to patentability as naturally occurring, isolated DNA segments." Just so you know: cDNA is simply a type of copy of genetic material. So essentially there is a door-sized loophole in the ruling that potentially renders it pointless. The Myriad stockholders, for example, celebrated upon hearing the verdict.Be informed. This theme might affect you and your family members and friends, should the horror of cancer suddenly become relevant for you... and thanks to our world being poisoned with chemicals, the chances of that are rising fast.) This is just one of the absolutely infuriating examples examined in The Corporation. They also talk about corporate whistle-blowers, Nazi-business collaboration, child labor, and so on. Trust me - you need to know this stuff, because the prevalence of narrow-minded, short-sighted behavioral patterns among mankind's leaders concerns every being on the planet in a profound manner. 100/10.

Today bashing big business is increasingly appealing. Specifically, the mismanagement of government is blamed on multinational corporate takeovers. A case in point is the privatization of the water supply in Banzer Suàrez's authoritarian Bolivia presented as evidence of this argument in 2004's The Corporation, where Noam Chomsky compared the entity of the modern multinational corporation to the slaving enterprise of a former age.That Banzer's rule led to such a dire financial situation where, in order to appease foreign creditors and continue receiving World Bank loans, he was forced to concede and privatize Bolivia's national water supply in La Paz/El Alto in 1997, and then Cochabamba in 1999, is not mentioned. We are to interpret the 'water wars' that then took place in 2000 and 2005, respectively, as solely the result of Suez, and Biwater/Bechtel's inherent greed.In this documentary the much-maligned Export Processing Zones (EPZs) are also the subject of inflammatory rhetoric. Naomi Klein emphatically points to these largely tax-free areas in low-cost, labour-abundant cities around the globe in which large multinational corporations are enticed to operate, where "the workers rarely make enough to buy three meals a day let alone feed their local economy".If we consider basic economic trade theory, we know that, in the real world, national wage rates do, in fact, reflect differences in productivity. In 1975 South Korea was a low-wage-rate low-productivity country, where workers earned 5% of what they did in the US; by 2007 its productivity was around 50% that of the US and its wages had, accordingly, risen.Where, then, does the blame for the appalling living conditions of labourers in certain Central American and Southeast Asian countries lie? In the corruption of their governments, the weakness of their financial sectors, capital markets, judiciary – in short: the inefficiency of their institutions. That poor people in rich countries should be subsidizing rich people in corrupt poor countries, to paraphrase the late Sir James Goldsmith, is not the result of the liberalization of trade. Rather, it is the fruit of systemic problems in less-developed societies.I would advise anyone who wishes to watch this documentary to do so with an open mind (i.e. remember that it is very skewed to a particular viewpoint). Because of that, and the fact that it doesn't really offer an objective analysis, I give it 5.

This excellent documentary accurately depicts, through factual reportage, the nature of a corporation, often a destructive force when it comes to the human consciousness, that is, when in contact with human consciousness, often toxic, when placed under considered scrutiny and in historical perspective.In my view, a corporation is not an "entity," nor a "person," despite judges in courts who have ruled it that, judges, perhaps bought and paid for by corporations reaching for control of and over civilization in the United States. A person has consciousness, compassion, and morality. A corporation does not. What it does have: "strategy." What the corporation is: a system, often with a singular objective, to make profits. It is the embodiment of greed.It is a strange phenomenon projected by human behavior. It was isolated, analyzed and described in Truman Capote's 1966 seminal work, In Cold Blood, a "non-fiction novel" first serialized in The New Yorker in 1965. This behavioral revelation is about the formation of an overriding singular force that is either tyrannically destructive or in a few cases, constructive, when two or more humans are present in a scenario. In Capote's book, two petty thieves create a singular, malevolent force that destroys an innocent family. By themselves, neither of the two thieves could or would have been capable of the murder.The positive or negative nature of the corporate force is created from the combination of top management, sometimes boards, if the board is in close control of the corporation. In most cases, since the objective of most corporations is profitability, the bottom line becomes the most powerful arbiter of the corporate behavioral history. In too many cases, the results are destructive to human health and welfare.Top management typically walks in a chain-lock-step, especially when members receive the obscene amount of compensation published in today's business journals. As a result, whistle blowers who report malfeasance, crime or destructively bad management are disposed of, and in the case of existing within a modest municipality controlled by the corporation, also black-listed.Malefactors are usually promoted and rewarded, often in spite of the corporation itself, as it begins to decline and eventually go out of business and close its doors, moving hundreds or thousands of employees and subcontractors who had grown dependent, out into the street to search of new employment.The greatest danger today (at this writing) is the takeover of governments by corporations who buy entire political parties, government institutions and more or less cause great human suffering and destruction of human well being and in too many cases, life itself. Untrammeled, the corporate system or force, has the potential to destroy all human life on Earth. This documentary clearly shows this possibility. It is the most insidious specter today, soon to come out of China in vast dimensions, presently inconceivable.

The Corporation should be given kudos for being a massive nearly three hour length documentary and still remain mostly entertaining and keep you engaged in the material. However I also felt like they were simply like lawyers trying to prove a case. It would not be hard for them to convince me that corporations are evil and conducive to bringing down society and yet they really pour it on thick and go so far as to try to make us believe that a corporation is equivalent and fits all the qualifications for a medical diagnose of a psychopath. Director and creator Mark Achbar is obviously very passionate about this topic and kudos to him but I think where the film falters is in it's passion. All this information is presented in a very factual straight forward fashion and it just feels like it's being drilled into you for three straight hours. I think the film could have been far more effective given a smaller time frame and some serious trimming. Certainly the film isn't for the weak minded or someone who doesn't want to be intellectually challenged because the film will take some serious thought. I think in the future we will see some great things in documentary film making. Worth seeing if you're doing some studying into the politics of corporations. 6/10