IN Michael Winterbottom’s documentary, comedian Russell Brand rants against the financial inequality that he alleges has given more wealth to 80 billionaires than the wealth shared by the rest of the world’s population.
In the film’s 101 minutes, Brand delivers a polemic reflecting a strong socialist attitude, angry, noisy and irreverent, a mass of statistics interspersed with interviews and crowd scenes alleviating his exhortations.
He invites a group of Union-Jack-waving primary school children to express their views. Their vociferous, unwavering agreement strikes me as contrived, responses rehearsed.
Brand attacks the heirs to wealthy ancestors. The film doesn’t mention philanthropy, at least not in the passages for which I succeeded in staying awake.
Like so many heart-on-sleeve documentaries that charge full tilt at a particular issue, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” commits the sin of information overload. After about 40 minutes, Brand and Winterbottom have given us all that need be said. The rest is boring.
Does it command our support? We’d all like enough wealth to support a comfortable, safe life from cradle to grave. Brand scarifies that band of brothers and sisters enjoying more wealth than they would ever need for life’s necessities, while at the bottom of the income heap are daddy’s workers toiling at two or more jobs to make ends meet.
The solution that the USSR tried didn’t work. China has many billionaires. Those with much want more. Those without enough wish they could get more. Inequality’s an insoluble problem.
The film avoids mentioning the amount of the filmmakers’ personal wealth.
At Palace Electric
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