Synopsis
Film adaptation of French economist Thomas Piketty's ground-breaking global bestseller of the same name: an eye-opening journey through wealth and power.
2019 Directed by Justin Pemberton
Film adaptation of French economist Thomas Piketty's ground-breaking global bestseller of the same name: an eye-opening journey through wealth and power.
Капітал у двадцять першому столітті, Capital in the 21st Century
As the Occupy Wall Street movement began to crest and millennials the world over started to realize they’d be the first generation since World War II to make less money than their parents, French economist Thomas Piketty had the good fortune to release a hyper-readable book that explained why (or at least offered a lucid argument for liberals to debate and conservatives to deny). “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” moved 1.5 million copies in its first two years of release, making it the highest-selling title that Harvard University Press has ever published, and turning its author into the closest thing his field has to a rock star.
Now, in the midst of an election year pandemic that is ruthlessly exposing…
This film is completely inadequate for our times: a broad survey of the history of our destructive economic system, in which technocrats gently suggest 'we need to fix capitalism'. It could be an Elizabeth Warren speech. If you're looking for anything resembling radical political or economic ideas, this is not the film for you.
It is unconscionable to me that a film titled 'Capital in the 21st Century' makes no mention of the climate crisis–the defining problem of our time. There has been a wealth of research over the past decade attributing the origins of global warming to the fossil-fueled dawn of capitalism–and the rampant acceleration of emissions in the past three decades to the deregulated capitalism unleashed by neoliberalism–and…
Pretty solid distillation of the book, but you should also just go ahead and read that instead, it's good.
Pretty people talking about 300 + years of history for 103 minutes.
Simplistic but not inaccurate.
Good to watch 20 minutes before going to an intellectual’s soirée...just make sure you drop your ‘truth bombs’ and flee quickly before anyone has follow-up questions.
For better or worse, this doc was able to explain in global terms what I inherently already knew...I’m financially fucked. 👍
I mean as far as documentaries go this wasn't too bad. It was kind of like a less coherent Hypernormalization.
As far as the actual content goes though it was atrocious. "Yeah we're seeing massive wealth inequality globally and the solution to that is... progressive taxation!" It is impossible for me to see the history of capitalism and conclude that anything short of capitalism itself is the problem. But this movie wants to convince you that first world countries ought to return to a more equitable capitalism of the post-war era.
As with most things this would be better if it were Marxist. If you go through this thinking that the events and effects in here was just a random…
This turned out to be way more moving (and, dare I say, "entertaining"?) than I had anticipated.
☆"The way the elite stays in power, and passes on their privilege to the next generation, is by shaping the way that we think."☆
It's a good time to watch a documentary like this, one with insight and key facts despite its mediocre quality, as we head from one presidential administration to another. Well, eventually. I guess not if Oozy Giuliani has anything to say about it.
Also, it's on the 2020 list of documentary Oscar submissions -- thanks Ken Rudolph! -- so that means I'll do my damnedest to watch it.
Anyway, still, this is an important story from a lauded book, adapted from Capital in the Twenty-First Century by the French economist Thomas Piketty. Director Justin Pemberton uses…
All that money, the money is the motive.
Just like the book, this covers a lot of ground in an engaging, streamlined fashion, which added to the greatly polished style of slick B-roll, movie clips and pop needle-drops to go with the talking heads, is a deliberate and successful trade-off in making the sweeping musings and conclusions accessible at the same time that narrows them into an accepted superficiality. Naturally, it's unequally invested in the specificity of parts of the world that are not the U.S. or Western Europe, but it sure gives you the big picture of exactly how fucked we all are. (spoiler: it's bad)
Capital in the Twenty-First Century is based on the popular economics book of the same name by Thomas Piketty and illustrates the reasons behind wealth disparity around the world over the past several centuries. The movie contains interviews with some of the most important economists around the world. It explains very difficult concepts in a way they were easy to understand. The movie is not as in depth as the book and glosses over some of its concepts. However, this is a timely and vital documentary that reveals the eye opening truths behind financial inequalities. This documentary was accessible, visually appealing, and very engaging.
I mean this in the nicest possible way: there is no point writing a book or making a documentary about the history of capitalism if you are not a Marxist.
Please spare us.
You end up with this snivelling technocratic plea to the rich: 'just let us tax you progressively!?' Surely then everything will be sorted (bzzt, it won't, it does not address the bulk of what is wrong with the system).
But wait, it gets even funnier. This documentary points out the aristocracy of Europe resisted that very notion until violent revolutions took place. There is no question that this will repeat in the 21st century. Whatever mild reforms the ruling class implement to save their skins will only…
look, i think it's good anytime media critical of capitalism is out there but i'd love this to have a bit more substance. it's slick and stylized but doesn't have anything novel, or even particularly interesting, to say. basically just a series of extremely reductive takes on history.
this is what i get for hoping that watching a documentary would be a substitute for reading a 700-page book.
Remember the completely fantastical and unrealistic scene in The Dark Knight Rises when the people of Gotham turn all the rich dudes out of their penthouses and leave them only with the furs on their backs?
Just thought of that for some reason
Visually interesting rat-a-tat summation of Pikkety's fascinating thoughts (nope, I've not read it). It's somewhat erratic, and its argument is a little inconsistent and inevitably simplified. I would have liked to have seen more thoughts on why inequality matters, and an acceptance that China has gone some way to bucking the trends to establish a growing middle class. But there are heavyweight views on offer: Stiglitz, Fukuyama, Pikkety himself.
Interesting that so much of the footage to support its view is media and fiction: news, film, literature etc. Pop will eat itself to be sure - the 21st Century of social media commenting on traditional media which gets its material from social media and so on - a vicious circle…
A must watch, incredibly informative and places us in the historical context we need to see ourselves in.
I absolutely ADORED having such a wide variety of speakers for the interview portions of the documentary. I was also fairly surprised I liked all the movie clips too. It tied together [capitalist] culture and economic capital well, illustrating the close intertwinement of the two umbrella terms. Some of the cinematography seemed a tad cheesy to me (felt like a snapchat filter at times) but I still enjoyed the aesthetics. My main qualm with this movie is that it didn't dig deeper. I'm assuming that within the book the author dissected these historical economic trends, but I didn't feel the depth within this piece. I felt the "grab your attention," through movie clips but not a focus on the specifics…
Thin. Doesn't engage substantially with Piketty's ideas at all. Useful for an introduction for young people, though.
Interesting and well made but a little vague/conservative. Looks too much at the past and too little on how it's shaping up to potentially happen again.
A great overview of the history of economic inequality, but lacks detailed solutions. Sure proper taxation of multinationals is a good starting place, but an inheritance tax? That’s hardly going to solve anything. The middle and lower classes must find ways to acquire capital of their own, that doesn’t involve the redistribution of wealth from heirs, and I didn’t see any substantial policy proposals to make that happen.
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