September 27, 2013
When the World Breaks
– US, 2010
Hans Fjellestad’s When the World Breaks is a documentary comprised of eleven parts.
The first eight focus primarily on the Great Depression of 1929 and part nine
focuses on more recent history, in particular, Japan’s “lost generation” of the
1990’s, and includes an interesting explanation of the four sources of stimulus.
It is the film’s last two parts, part ten and the film’s epilogue, that prove
the most problematic, for they reveal the filmmaker’s desire to end on an underserved
optimistic note, similar to the way current documentaries about climate change
and nuclear weapons end with overly optimistic intertitles that claim that the
power to solve complex global challenges rests in the hands of common people. If
only it were that easy.
The film, for the most part, is fascinating, and it often
touches on aspects of the Great Depression that have often been ignored. In
part one, we hear personal testimonials from such famous people as Phyllis
Diller, Art Linkletter, Ray Bradbury, and Mickey Rooney. Of these, I was most
intrigued by Art Linkletter’s and Jerry Stiller’s personal narratives. The
second part opens with the revelation that there is no agreement about what
exactly happened in 1929. We also learn about the impact the Depression had on
families and men in particular. It is in this part that actor James Karen
divulges a sad chapter in his family’s life. It is a tale that will likely stay
with viewers for a while.
Other parts have similarly powerful moments. In part four,
we learn that during the Depression, unemployed men blamed themselves, not the
system, and we learn that there were indeed integrated protest marches over the
evictions of people who had nowhere else to go. Part five and six have some
fascinating tidbits about the popular music and films of the 1930’s, including
a rather curious reading of 1939’s The
Wizard of Oz. Part seven details the governments’ hiring of artists and the
meaning of the art world’s shift to social realism. Part eight explores the
effects of President Roosevelt’s New Deal policies and includes an interesting
cartoon in which a Mickey Mouse lookalike asks the president what the key to
curing a depression is. Particularly surprising is an assertion that the New
Deal did not end the Great Depression; instead, it is credited with having
created the conditions for the prosperity and relative economic stability that
followed the Second World War.
Each of these parts, as well as the ninth part, which has to
do with Japan’s lost decade, is well
constructed and could easily have been expanded into a full-length documentary of
its own. In addition, the film uses its celebrity testimonials in the right
way, and their stories alternate from inspiring to sad. Credit should also be
given to Fjellestad for moving from their anecdotes to analyses of historians
and experts at exactly the right time.
As I mentioned previously, the film becomes problematic
towards the end of the ninth part, for it is here that the audience is told
that regardless of the circumstances that have caused people to become unemployed,
all they needs to do is to have confidence in themselves, roll up their
sleeves, and start anew. It is a message that Thomas Friedman would no doubt
endorse, and there is a great deal of truth in it. Here’s the problem, however.
By the time the film delivers its rather rosy assessment of individual
self-determination, its audience has already been shown examples of what helped
ease the Great Depression and enabled the United States to avoid the kind of
catastrophic economic crisis that struck in 2008 for more than sixty years.
Needless to say, it was not just young entrepreneurs who made a lot of money on
Wall Street creating small start-up companies. Ignored are the generations
saddled with college debt and credit card debt, those whose job skills are no
longer in demand, and the current political gridlock that has prevented the
government from taking the kind of action that might actually help put more people
back to work. Instead, the film seems to suggest that the United States’s economic
problems can all be fixed with a little elbow grease and a lot of confidence. It
strikes me as a rather naïve assessment.
That said, the film is a fascinating, eye-opening, and
emotional experience. It is well-constructed and succeeds at giving viewers a rather
complete overview of 1930’s America. It also is not a film that does all of the
work for the audience; rather, it presents information about the Great
Depression and lets the audience mentally compare and contrast that event and
its aftermath with the 2008 crisis and what has come after it. In fact, were it
not for the film’s cop-out of a final act, I have no doubt that the film would
be embraced by history and economics classes all across the country. This is a
case of a film whose parts are greater than its whole, but, really, what
amazing parts those are. (on DVD in Region 1 and 3)
3 and a half stars
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