What, per se, qualifies me to sit in judgment regarding this
chatty, direct-address documentary offering about the world’s economic problems?
Quite simply, nothing. The global economy, made up as it is of myriad smaller
parts, is a fantastically complicated thing, and so any macro, birds-eye view assessment
of it is bound to be on some level an exercise in tedium. Expectation meets an execution
dictated by subject matter, then, in Where
is the World Going, Mr. Stiglitz?
 explains how the world’s<br />
economy works, affecting everything from immigration to global warming and<br />
environment. Drawing not only from his vast academic expertise but also from<br />
time spent on the ground in countries around the world, Stiglitz offers fresh<br />
thinking about the questions and challenges facing all of us — from well-off<br />
Americans to those mired in <st1:place>Third World</st1:place> poverty. Along<br />
the way, viewers get both a crash course in present-day interconnected reality<br />
and a speculative look at where we’re headed.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=)
You, the forthcoming On the Rumba
River) obviously feels deeply about globalization and the industrialized
world’s skewed relationships with developing nations, and I share many of his interests
and concerns. To say that unfair trade and other foreign policy decisions by the
have had no role in shaping the rest of the world’s view of us is, well, silly,
to put in nicely. Still, while there’s a powerful social conscience here, a lot
of the pearls get lost in a sludgy mixture of staid delivery. Hate as I do to
take the easy point of comparison, Sarasin and/or Stiglitz could stand to learn
a thing or two from former vice president Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.
Sure, that film was at its core a PowerPoint presentation, but this film needs some
of David Guggenheim’s smart Inconvenient
framing mechanisms, or at the very least an outline that can be followed and
digested with more ease. Extra footage blended in with the tightly framed talking-head material would give the movie not only visual depth, but help illustrate the points its subject is making.
I trying to; the man’s credits and intelligence are unimpeachable. Recognized
around the world as a leading economic educator, Stiglitz’s résumé includes stints
as Chairman of Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors; Chief Economist at
the World Bank; professorships at Yale, Princeton, Oxford, Stanford and Columbia
University; and work as a private consultant to several world leaders (how do
you get that gig?). His books — including
the worldwide bestseller Globalization
and Its Discontents and its newly released follow-up, Making Globalization Work — have been translated into more than 35 languages.
So with all that experience and specialization, it would stand to reason that there
is legitimate insight that follows. For every concise metaphor or savvy extrapolation,
however, Where is the World Going, Mr.
Stiglitz?, also features a yawning, over-the-shoulder introduction or
set-up. For these reasons, some of the causal relationships and complexities of
globalization dance still just out of reach, at least for an audience of
laypersons.
with a snap-in tray, Where is the World
Going, Mr. Stiglitz? includes as supplemental bonus features downloadable
audio files for MP3 players as well as brief biographies on both its creator and citizen-star. To purchase the film via Amazon, click here. To purchase the film via Half.com, click here. C+ (Movie) C+ (Disc)