The Take (2004)

It is a performances centric movie

Did you people see the same film I saw?

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

For folks of the leftist persuasion there's not really been a lot of cheerful stuff in the news for the past decade or three. The trouble with normal, as they say, is that it always gets worse. Most political documentaries are the same way -- something terrible is happening, the polemical narrator assures us, and other than the go-out-and-do-something last ten minutes of the film things are kind of universally bleak.The Take opposes all of that, and is the rare piece of media in which the revolution is not just a vague series of values but an actual practise, made up mostly of hard work and disagreement, but moving forward in a positive direction nonetheless. Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein aren't the slickest filmmakers in the world, but they know enough to get out of the way and let the incredible story before them unfold. One of the few documentaries -- one of the few films period -- that I've left feeling genuine hope, this is a must-see for anyone who believes (or wants to believe) that another world is possible.

As nice, simple, and uplifting as this movie is. There is one big problem. And I am not talking about the complete lack of explanations and important information left out of the movie. I'm talking about the fact that it is made by Naomi Klein, a hack! Her stupid "No Logo" bullshit only translates to other areas of media, now in the form of this Mocumentary. Let's just think here, what is the other option to Globalization? Oh ya, Nationalism! Oops I almost forgot about that, how important it is and how easily it leads everyone down the path of the dark side. It brought us great men like Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Yay for them, but it's just too bad all those people had to die. You die-hard leftist morons are living a Utopic dream which can only be realized in Thomas Moore's book! Utopia literally means "no place" or "no where" and it is safe to say that you guys are always heading in that direction. But I do not doubt that you are making progress in that endeavor. Klein and Lewis are hypocrites. Just look at the places Klein lives in; She has houses in some of the most expensive places in the world. Look at the value of her place in Toronto! These people are like shepherd's of thought, they say "Do as I say, not as I do." Why? To make money and in particular to take yours! They are simply different vessels of the Capitalist thought that is within everyone, and as long you love and support them they will continue to make millions off of the ignorant. People like Klein and Lewis deserve nothing more than the inside of a prison cell with a single copy of the Communist Manifesto to keep them company and to remind them of where it gets people.

No one is more rad-chic than Naomi Klein, with her cool war-resister parents, alternative doctor father and militant feminist mother. She crossed Canada at 16 years old campaigning against nuclear power and wrote a hit book attacking globalisation in her 20s.Now she has made a feel-good movie out of the economic catastrophe that hit Argentina, by following the weary campaign of unemployed steel workers to join a couple of hundred other factory occupations and take control of their abandoned steel works.Klein and spouse Avi Lewis were in Argentina for some six months, with a crew of 16 and a budget of about C$1m, so we could certainly expect results. Whether this resounding endorsement of worker co-ops (slogan: Fire The Boss) is quite what the NFB had in mind is not clear.At a couple of points, I felt the film ruined Argentina offered was about the repulsive imp Carlos Menem and the murderous bourgeois traitors he represented. Who is going to purge those secret policemen who rubbed out some 30,000 lefties? When are those generals going to face a court? Why was Menem not in prison instead of running for president? But the survival tactics of the workers on the ground was a more humane story, and that is to Klein's credit.

This movie helps progressive people address one of the main criticisms of the right and capitalists: what would you do differently if capitalism and globalization is so bad? Argentina was a country where public utilities had been sold off and money fled the country. Factories were left empty, owing millions of dollars in taxes to various levels of government. The workers thought: we don't have jobs, so we can't buy things for our families. There are no jobs, because people aren't buying things for their families. So they broke the cycle, and with government approval (eventually) occupied the factories and just started producing items for themselves and their neighbors. The co-operative/collectivist movement in Argentina flourished.The movie shows it was far from easy, and there are many hurdles left to overcome for this country and its people. But it's a hopeful message that if you buy locally, use locally produced services and products produced "locally", you create a viable economic cycle that enriches everybody. You may not have $40 microwaves produced someplace else on the other side of the world, but instead you get a quality product produced by your neighbour, that doesn't require the expense and waste of trans-global shipment. Then, the makers of cheap microwaves will be forced to pay their workers more in order to create a local/national market for their products, rather than using slave labour and shipping the products overseas to the "first world".Okay, I'm off my soap box. Well done movie with real emotion and appeal.