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Canada · 2012
Rated R · 1h 22m
Director Jennifer Baichwal
Starring
Genre Documentary
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A documentary adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, an investigation of how debt functions in societies across the world, monetary or otherwise. The film includes interviews with prominent intellectuals providing commentary on the different forms of debt and how this shapes our social systems.
Aesthetically, it's desultory. Talking-heads rants and ruminations are further stultified by the amateurish aesthetics. Visually, zooms, pans and filler moments enervate the message. Most annoying, the dour music grates throughout; its hollow grinding, we'd guess, is an attempt to impart profundity.
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
You can't help feeling that the movie owed its subject - and its audience - a bit more.
This documentary on the many forms of human debt, though often frustratingly broad, offers a path to balancing civilization's ledger with a hard-nosed brand of altruism.
Ultimately, this intriguing but scattershot movie turns on the incompatibility of two worldviews - the corporate-financial vs. the environmental-spiritual.
Payback attempts something impressively difficult, but it succeeds primarily in its individual moments.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Rick Groen
Payback is nothing if not brave. It's a documentary attempt to give concrete shape to an abstract discussion, using the medium of film to transplant a nuanced thesis – on the concept of debt – from its natural home on the printed page.
Payback is a rarefied conceptual documentary that will appeal to a limited but highly appreciative audience.
All are subjects worthy of discussion, but tackling them in one film disrupts the movie's momentum and shortchanges viewers. Baichwal could have devoted a single film to just BP's disgraceful behavior.
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