Maxed Out

This evening I went to free screening of the new documentary Maxed Out. (I love being a student. The director James Scurlock came to answer questions, as did Professor Warren, who was interviewed in the film.) It’s a movie about a fascinating and timely topic: consumer debt in America. The median American household currently spends 107% of their yearly income. Which pretty much everyone would agree isn’t sustainable. So what is it about our culture, our society – our credit card and mortgage market? – that gets us in this predicament? And what can we do about it? This film only partially addresses each idea, but it’s a big problem with a lot of players, so one can’t really expect more from a single 87-minute documentary.

Maxed Out is a documentary of the Fast Food Nation and Fahrenheit 9/11 family: relatively entertaining, a bit over-simplistic (I wish there had been a bit more data, and dates), and really best at snide comments. I kind of wish that a documentary maker would remember that he has the audience for about an hour and half – he doesn’t have to make his jokes by media footage intercut with silent text poking fun at politicians’ soundbites. It just seems like a cheap shot to make fun of politicians, especially when you don’t have to and the topic is big enough not to be partisan anyway. Also, when intercut text is the documentary maker’s version of a comedian’s one-liner, its passivity and lack of voice makes it feel like it has less integrity to me.

But this is a quarrel with the style of documentary that has become popular, and there’s probably nothing I can do about that. Within the framework of this style, the documentary is satisfactorily put together. There’s a bunch of footage, some of it really funny, some of it heartbreaking, some of it maddening. There are some great juxtapositions of a 1960 instructional video about credit and current credit card advertisements, and some pretty great stock footage that is used to make points by putting the analogies interviewees make on the screen, including one a zealous and enthusiastic collector makes comparing himself to a pirate whose job is to “push someone out on the plank as far as they can go, so then they will do anything to come back.” He said it to explain why he likes his job, but the image was just so appalling that when an old silent film scene of a pirate sword fight flashed on the screen, it was both sad and hilarious.

Perhaps it’s not saying much to say that the film was actually compelling even with its stylistic faults. I mean, how can it not be compelling? This documentary really makes you realize that debt in this country isn’t happening just at the margins of our society. Nor is debt exclusively the result of “spend money to make money” “Flip that House” TLC-show spending. It’s happening to middle class families and their kids in college. It’s happening to servicemen who were deployed for much longer than their savings and mortgages could stand. It’s happening to the poor, too, and the disenfranchised, and the mentally disabled, and the elderly, and the sick. If you aren’t aware of the scope of the issue, this movie is really worth it. But even if you do know, from academic reading or an anecdote, it’s heartbreaking to hear some of these stories from real people. A few of the stories are truly tragedies, and to see the ripple effect of bankruptcy and bad credit, sometimes to the point of death, is just... let’s just say that I was actually crying at one point.

At times, Maxed Out strays from its didactic message (“Consumer Financial Products Companies Are Exploiting America, and We’re Letting Them”), which makes the film a bit scattered. Originally, it was supposed to be a movie about consumer culture in America, and you can tell he just didn’t have the heart to lose his favorite footage. There’s a prologue and epilogue section that are far too long and don’t really mesh with the rest of the film’s story about debt, except debt’s tenuous connection to our ideas about the rich and famous (Robin Leach is even interviewed). Mr. Scurlock also included a few random scenes that seem to try to paint other entities with the same brush as the banks who charge astronomical interest rates and fees, such as a single throwaway scene of a preacher talking about tithing. I think he was trying to say that megachurches talking about tithing are like bank collectors who demand payments from people who can’t afford them. But to give the director the benefit of the doubt, there’s no explanation why that scene is in there, no connection to the rest of the film. It’s just there, like a remnant of the original “consumer culture” film idea that was just never cut. But if Mr. Scurlock is trying to imply with that scene what I think he’s implying, he’s just wrong. Which is sad, because so much of the rest of his film is solid and compelling, and now I have to go to sleep at night wondering, “Why, oh why, do we allow and even support what amounts to nothing less than predatory (and sometimes deceitful) usury?” Maxed Out can't answer that question, but it’ll certainly make you want to ask the question until someone does reply.

Movie Review: Stolen

My relationship with rain fluctuates quite a bit. Sometimes it's glorious to walk through; sometimes it's just annoying to get wet. Sometimes I feel cooped up being inside; sometimes I love looking out the window at the raindrops, or curling up with a book or movie. Currently, though, I'm pretty happy with rain. It's summer rain, first of all, so it's warm and therefore less of a pain to walk through. And second of all, it's allowed me to duck in to a couple movie theaters recently and see some good flicks on the big screen. Yesterday's movie at E Street Cinema was one you may not have heard of, but if you get a chance, you might want to check it out.

Stolen is a documentary about the 1990 art theft that took place at the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum, wherein two unknown thieves posed as Boston police officers entered the museum, tied up the guards, and proceeded to steal thirteen works of art, among them three Rembrandts, five Degas, and a Vermeer. But Stolen is also a documentary about Isabella Stewart Gardner herself, her art collection, and its acquisition. And though the film is only 82 minutes, it also has its share of con artists, conspiracy theorists, art detectives, and art-obsessed writers. And a bit of a ghost story. And some international politics. In order to keep all these elements organized, the viewer is subjected to many interjected chapter titles, which are annoying and ruin almost all sense of pacing.

To the film's credit, however, all these disparate elements somehow come together to create a single story, even though it's hard to say what that story is. One could make the argument that it is just about the theft, and all the background about museum and the thirteen stolen pieces, especially Vermeer's The Concert, just illuminate just what what stolen and why it is important. Presumably, this is what the film's creator, Rebecca Dreyfus, wants this film to be about: the trailer, the website, and even the film's title lend themselves to this reading of the myriad of topics she raises in her film.

But almost as easily, the exact same film could have been named Isabella's Museum. There is a lot of focus on the aura of this little museum in Boston, to which the theft has certainly contributed: because of the structure of Ms. Gardner's will in 1924, the museum's collection may not be altered, so the walls simply remain empty where the stolen pieces used to hang. The woman behind the museum and how she acquired the pieces is at least as interesting as the theft that occured there, and we learn about both in parallel.

My opinion, though, is that Stolen is really about how art can capture the soul, the imagination, and perhaps even the common sense and sanity of those who dedicate their lives to it. In just 82 minutes, it is hard to understand how so many people have had their part of their lives consumed by the art involved in the theft. And yet every single person onscreen is overcome, either by the artwork itself or the mystery that surrounds it: a Boston reporter claims to have "lost" a year to the search for the masterpieces, a Vermeer biographer and a couple novelists nearly break down just talking about the theft of The Concert, and in a letter Isabella Stewart Gardner compares her art collecting to taking morphine or being alcoholic. A renowned art detective is dedicated to recovering these pieces even though he has skin cancer and is past retirement age, and becomes perhaps too confident that he can recover at least some of the artwork. Another detective stops talking on the record for safety reasons. And perhaps most intriguing are the museum attendant and the former art thief who find themselves involved in this story, each obsessed in his own way.

Even the film itself seems a result of this preoccupation with the museum, Isabella Stewart Gardner, and that single Vermeer that was stolen along with 12 other pieces of priceless art. Ms. Dreyfus saw the The Concert as a little girl, and her film now studies -- pores over, really -- the image of that painting, hinting at Ms. Dreyfus's own obsession. And for those in the audience who do not share a passion for 17th century art or 19th century Bostonian museum creators or 20th century art theft, it is the obsession itself -- not the object of obsession -- that captivates one's attention.

2.5 out of 4 stars