Payback
(Canada, 86 min.)
Written and directed by Jennifer Baichwal
Based on the book Payback:
Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth by Margaret Atwood, this new doc, directed
by Jennifer Baichwal and presented by the National Film Board of Canada,
explores the history and philosophy of indebtedness. Atwood first presented her
study of debt at the 2008 Massey Lectures. It was a timely subject then, what
with the onset of the recession and all, and Payback feels just as timely in 2012 now that the public is feeling
the repercussions of the recession, or to put it in the language of the film,
paying of this great debt.
Payback shows the
reach of indebtedness by cross-cutting the Massey Lecture with six different
stories of people in debt. The film offers several forms of payback and
penance, which stem from the phrase that spurred Atwood’s query, “He has paid
his debt to society.” The film shows the source of such penance by cutting to the
eroding ruins of Eastern State Penitentiary. As the curator explains, Eastern
State was the first penitentiary. The building has a number of elaborate cells
that were built to host a large number of inmates in isolation. The wrongdoers
would sit by themselves and ruminate on what they did and do penance by
learning of their mistakes. It turns out that the penitentiary was more likely
to create madness than civil do-gooders.
The film furthers this question of how someone repays society
by interviewing two current inmates. One is Paul Mohammed, a petty thief and
drug-addict who has been in-and-out of jail routinely. The other is media-mogul
Conrad Black, who speaks from his swanky mansion in Florida. Mohammed explains
the inadequacy of his payback to society, since he keeps returning to jail, but
nothing is done remedy the cause of why he is a repeat offender. Black, on the
other hand, offers some hilarious and eloquent rationalizations on the pros and
cons of the penal system, as well as for the various “crimes” that might be
created by “misplaced cunning.” The juxtaposition between Mohammed’s situation
and Black’s situation helps further the film’s argument that society’s emphasis
on payback and atonement is flawed, since not everyone has the same access and
opportunity. The point is underlined by Atwood’s sardonic reflection on the “trickle
down” effect from the wealthy, noting that the metaphor works for the rich since
it’s merely a slow leak and not a gushing waterfall.
In terms of financial debt, Payback tells of a dispute between the Coalition of Immokalee
workers and the Pacific Tomato Growers. The former are employees at a tomato farm:
they’re Mexican migrants and they’re essentially treated as slave labourers. By
showing the negotiations between the unions and their superiors, the film shows
that all financial compensations must also be mindful of the human element that
makes such debts significant. This narrative is arguably the most hopeful
element in the film.
Payback also
explores if and how debt can be paid when the cost is not solely financial.
Baichwal uses the recent case of the BP oil spill to show the exorbitant
environment damage caused by the disaster. The shots of the oil corrupting the
ocean and blackening the shores offer the most evocative imagery in the film,
and the images are paired with the talking heads of the film to ask when kind
of justice is served when BP pays a sum of twenty billion dollars in damages,
yet the estimates for the damage range from thirty billion to an excess of one-hundred
billion dollars. How can anyone – individual or entity – repay damage that
might be irreversible?
The most interesting story tells of a blood feud in rural
Albania. One man is confined to his home in some arcane form of house arrest.
His neighbour has the right to shoot him if he leaves. As both the debtor and
“debtee” explain, the man must stay at home because the former shot his
neighbour three times with a machine gun when the latter allegedly got in a
spat with the other man’s wife. The reason the one man is paying for his crime,
the victim says, is not so much for the shooting, but for the fact that the
debtor claims he fired the shots because the other man hit his wife. Man B
denies this, and for this reason, Man A must be isolated from the community for
disgracing another man’s name. What good does this repayment have, though, when
the only result is personal satisfaction; moreover, why should the family of
the debtor be incorporated into their father’s debt?
By approaching the subject from the forms of legal,
financial, moral, environmental, personal and communal debts, Payback questions effectiveness of
systems that evaluate debt, reciprocity, penance. The film shows that debt is largely
a mental construct, not to mention a product of man-made systems like
capitalism and economics. The question returns to Atwood, who, in her sole
direct address to the camera, introduces her story of Ebenezer Scrooge, whom
she dubs “Scrooge Nouveau.” As Atwood reads her story, the various subjects of
the film join in and read Payback in
their own language, bridging Atwood’s essay into a mission that is both
personal and collective. Baichwal ends the film by turning the question of
indebtedness back on the audience and asks the members to recognize their own
implication in the cyclical ideology that perpetuates debt. If people made
these systems, Baichwal’s threads suggest, they can also remove them. Just who
pays back to whom, however, remains to be seen. Rather than offer an easy
answer, Payback raises many difficult
questions. It’s a relevant and thought-provoking essay.
Rating: ★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
*Photos courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada. Photo
of Conrad Black courtesy Jeffrey Salter.
