I just finished watching Capital in the Twenty-First Century and you should go check it out while it’s still streaming either at Hot Docs at Home, Metro Cinema online, or VIFF at Home (probably some other places too). It’s based on a book and is a pretty decent overview of centuries of our global economic system (though mostly focused on the West and America in particular as we get closer to the present). The film does a great job of tying social and political movements to economic change and makes a strong argument for the 21st century being a return to the 17th and 18th centuries in terms of our economy and the ways in which we control capital. As far as films go, it’s not super exciting. It’s a pretty basic documentary that follows a very linear timeline with talking heads interspersed with clips from films, tv shows, news clippings, and archival footage for context and visual reference. The use of popular culture to make connections more realistic for the audience (especially when mixed with the few archival clips) does keep things interesting and, honestly, the very brutality of some of the portrayals of the past, present, and future is often more affective and effective than any “real” footage that has been overused in every possible documentary out there could be.

What I found most interesting was actually the experience of watching this film at this particular time. One of the underlying arguments in the film is that great (positive) change comes after a major catastrophic event that forces the public to rise up and fight for redistribution of wealth. In the recent past, of course, these events were the World Wars and the Great Depression of the 1930s. In all cases, the film shows how the concept of capital was reconfigured and our economy was “saved.” There is an argument in the film for the Recession of 2008 as having the potential to operate as another catalyst, but the fact that Capitalism as it is now understood has grown to such heights where banks are too big to fail meant that the “required” bail out by the government and the American people worked to confirm and strengthen the system — making the rich richer and the poor poorer — rather than forcing real change or resetting/redistributing wealth. The basic unspoken suggestion as the film concludes is that revolution is coming and it is looking very similar (politically, socially, and financially) to pre-World War II (at the very least). The question is: will the catalyst be global war or global depression or something else?

Streaming the film from my bedroom at my parents’ place as part of a virtual film festival during a global pandemic when many are worried about the world’s economy and their own health means that the film’s somewhat ambiguous ending has even more meaning than it would have pre-pandemic. Have we found the catalyst that will incite the public to push back against the privileged class and force redistribution of wealth and a reorganization of our economy? Are the calls for a universal basic income — a campaign promise that seemed impossible just a few months ago in the US, but now looks more viable here in Canada coming out of this situation — and the increased grumblings about prison reform, improved long term care for seniors, federal child care expectations, government drug plans, and dental care for all going to change taxation? Will the initiatives coming out of Europe that put pressure on the major tech multinationals finally help us to work together on a global level to regulate those multinationals and destroy or at least lessen the impact of tax havens so that social income from multi-national profits actually make it to the people who pay for it and need it? No, probably not. But there are small steps being made and, if history (or this film) teaches us anything, it is that the working class can only be pushed so far before they finally push back and demand change.