Tag: film

Love and contradictions

I want to state up front that some of my favorite movies have been superhero and spy films and that I love cop shows. These shows tend to have a conservative, pro-government outlook, even the best of them, but I go and revel in the spectacle.

That does not mean I can’t also be critical of their political subtexts and wish that our film culture could be more progressive, less about defense of the status quo or a pro-military ethos.

I guess I am part of the problem, but I can’t help but like Bond films and Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes. 

  • Send me an e-mail.
  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Dramatic, yes, but missing the point

http://www.hbo.com/bin/hboPlayerV2.swf?vid=1175400

I just watched HBO’s Too Big to Fail and I have to say that, dramatically, it lives up to the hype. The story moves along at a brisk pace and the star-studded cast turns in a collection of powerful performances.

And yet, Too Big to Fail fails in the same way that historical recreations often fail: It simplifies the 2008 financial disaster, turns a massive systemic derailment into a story of individuals. Hank Paulson and Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke and the leaders of the big banks and investment houses — these are the players, the decision-makers and the men (almost exclusively) who nearly drove the nation off a cliff and then, at the last minute, righted it.

This makes for great cinema and storytelling, but it is lousy history. The 2008 financial crisis had far deeper roots than the film implies. They go far deeper than just the Clinton-era financial reforms that turned the Street into a casino, deeper than the deregulatory mania of the Carter and Reagan years. The problem is capitalism itself, which is prone to boom-and-bust cycles and demands profits at all costs.

Too Big to Fail is, in the end, insider baseball, the story of how Washington insiders averted a crisis of their own making.

  • Send me an e-mail.
  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.