BuzzFlash Reviews
The Take (DVD)
A Film by Avi Lewis & Naomi Klein
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First of all, this documentary was conceived by our favorite commentator on the pitfalls of globalization, Naomi Klein. Klein, a Canadian professor and activist, more than anyone we know has her finger on the crosscurrents of globalization, branding, multi-national corporations, worker exploitation, marketing and just plain greed.
Klein's effectiveness is due to her keen analysis of how globalization is used as a shell game to increase profiteering by our new nation states without significant government restraints. These entities which surpass the economic output of many nations are called multi-national corporations. These companies have far more impact on the interworkings of the politics between nations than the United Nations -- and the Busheviks, for one, like it that way just fine (as does the Democratic Leadership Council).
Okay, that's some background.
But "The Take" is a documentary about the specific impact of globalization and the International Monetary Fund on one country, Argentina, which went, in essence, bankrupt. As a result, factories in that South American nation went belly up across the country.
"The Take" is a National Film Board of Canada production that teamed Klein with Director-Journalist Avi Lewis as they chronicle the efforts of the workers of one shuttered factory to "reclaim" it and turn it into a worker-controlled enterprise.
We get introduced into the stressful personal lives of the jobless blue collar Argentinians as they undertake a monumental bureaucratic, legal and financial journey to reopening a gritty industrial plant, this time owned by them.
Along the way, Klein and Lewis document the background of Argentina's stunning economic collapse and the spreading movement of workers to reopen their places of work under employee management.
Klein is an impassioned, brilliant advocate who, nonetheless, confidently, credibly and calmly explains the context of the crisis while also introducing us to the devastating impact of the Argentinian crash on the dispossessed blue-collar workers.
The National Film Board of Canada describes the film this way: "The Take is a political thriller that turns the globalization debate on its head. The film follows Argentina's radical new movement of occupied businesses: groups of workers who are claiming the country's bankrupt workplaces and running them without bosses.
With The Take, director Avi Lewis, one of Canada's most outspoken journalists, and writer Naomi Klein, author of the international bestseller No Logo, champion a radical economic manifesto for the 21st century. But what shines through in the film is the simple drama of workers lives and their struggles: the demand for dignity and the searing injustice of dignity denied."
Worker's using sweat equity to reopen inactive plants that the owners are cannibalizing by selling off the machinery. What's radical about that? What good is an empty factory, stripped of its equipment?
The production of products to increase economic output and pay people for a day's labor? Isn't that what capitalism is meant to do? That's what our economy is supposed to be all about. So we are told.
By the way, we don't normally give away the ending of films, but we will in this case. The group of tenacious auto-part workers who "reclaim" their vacant factory? In the end, they are triumphant.
It's a cinematic moment worth savoring.
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