The American Ruling Class

"The American Ruling Class" is one of the most unusual films to be made in America in recent years, both in terms of form and subject. The form is a first, a "dramatic-documentary-musical" that re-invents all three genres. And the subject is our country's most taboo topic: class, power and privilege in our nominally democratic republic. At the bottom, the film is a morality tale, the story of two Yale students who seek their opportunities after graduation. Lewis Lapham, the renowned essayist, author and longtime Harper's Magazine editor, conducts them through the corridors of power - Pentagon press briefings, the World Economic Forum, philanthropic foundations, Washington law firms, banks, the Council on Foreign Relations and New York society dinners.