Dir. Various, USA, 2010, 90mins
Cast: Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner, Morgan Spurlock
Review by Christopher Upton
In times of forced austerity and socio-economic crises, there’s a tremendous amount of analysis being doled out from all angles. Whether it’s coming from officials, or just from ourselves, a theme of wondering how we arrived at this situation, and more importantly how best to escape it pervades everything. While this documentary avoids the economic crises, it’s societal focussed analysis feels fitting with the public climate as we enter 2011.
In Freakonomics, various award winning documentary filmmakers were drafted in to answer a selection of questions analysed by the best-selling book the film is based on. Director Morgan Spurlock looks at how a child’s name can affect the type of person they become in later life; Alex Gibney takes a look at corruption within the deeply honourable world of sumo, and Eugene Jarecki posits an interesting theory as to why crime rates decreased so rapidly in the early 90s.
Freakonomics initially manages to draw you in because it raises a myriad of compelling questions not contemplated before. It also manages to apply the world of economics to a social sphere in a much more original way than other documentaries have manage. The problem with Freakonomics is that a collaboration between such disparate and respected documentary filmmakers, on such a wide reaching subject as humanity, ends up creating massive tonal shifts.
Shifting from a comedic look at whether someone’s name will destine them for a life of trailer park living, to a dark look at whether all of our souls are inherently corruptible just throws you out of the experience that a great documentary should provide.
The directors previous works, like the exceptional King of Kong, the shocking Super Size Me and the horrifying Taxi to the Dark Side, ensured maximum effectiveness by having a single focus and analysing it in their own style for the entirety of a feature. Freakonomics opens up avenue after avenue of human analysis, and while these ideas are engrossing, not enough time is spent with them to make the conclusions utterly satisfying.
Freakonomics is not a bad documentary; it’s problem lies in the fact that it’s more akin to a short introduction to lots of other, more promising, documentaries. The committee approach leads to the whole thing feeling mismatched, and while the individual stories work, when placed together they fail to harmonise and compliment each other. While this may be an excellent analogy for humanity itself, the lack of intent means that Freakonomics is left as a scattered piece of filmmaking.
