Image courtesy of Magnolia Films
Freakonomics the film covers some of the same ground the bestseller did five years ago, and is sure to spark discussion and debate among viewers about its sometimes controversial hypotheses and evasive conclusions. Based on the work of “rogue” economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner, the film assembles a who’s who of contemporary documentarians who create four distinct shorts held deftly together by interstitials written and directed by Seth Gordon.
The tome Freakonomics spent more than two years on The New York Times Bestseller list and more than year in the national Top Ten, sold more than 4 million copies and was printed in 35 languages around the globe, earning its reputation as a global phenomenon. Levitt’s research applied data analysis to everyday happenings to uncover revealing information about parenting, cheating, crime, real estate—a hodgepodge of elements in contemporary life. Freakonomics follows the numbers almost religiously; its underlying premise that incentives matter is punctuated in film’s prologue. According to Levitt, “if you can figure out what people’s incentives are, you have a good chance of guessing how they are going to behave. “
The film—an official selection for the Tribeca Film Festival’s Closing Night, the Los Angeles Film Festival, and Silverdocs—presents Levitt and Dubner as amiable talking heads who appear in snippets and bookends, attempting to draw out the “tricky ways to get at causality.” Seth Gordon (The King of Kong) capabably directs the prologue and transitional segments, creating entertaining interludes themselves deserving of further time.
Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) takes on the cultural and racial disparity among baby names, asking if names equal destiny in the segment, “A Roshanda by any Other Name.” Starting with parental desire to maximize our positive impact on our children’s lives, from Mozart in the womb, to truckloads of advice books and premium enrichment activities, Spurlock’s segment hones in on trends in baby names, taking up studies by Harvard economics professor Roland Fryer that examine names as an embodiment of cultural segregation. And while Fryer’s studies find that social context more than the name itself determines outcomes, others’ perceptions of you, however, might be determined by your name, as Sendhil Mullainathan, himself a professor of economics at Harvard, studies how “black” names create bias against applicants in the labor market. Ultimately, the segment concludes where it opens: choosing a name might be done with as much care as launching a new brand, and why wouldn’t parents do anything they can to benefit their child in today’s world.
Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Casino Jack and The United States of Money) directs the most narratively compelling and visually arresting segment of the film in his exploration of the underbelly of sumo wrestling, “Pure Corruption” asking “What happens to markets when people cheat?” Offering insight into sumo that seldom emerge in Western coverage, the segment examines how sumo’s connection with Shinto religion and centuries of tradition serve as sort of protective screen against the charges of corruption that have plagued the sport in recent decades, with hard data pointing towards almost certain match fixing.
Gibney then extends the original Freakonomics question of “what do teachers and sumo wrestlers have in common?” to add in another: “What do sumo wrestlers have in common with Bernie Madoff, Goldman Sachs and the near-collapse of the global financial system?” Here, Dubner explains that Bernie Madoff’s “reputation was so large that it discouraged [the SEC] from coming in with a bias toward corruption and instead they brought a bias against it.” Interesting, yes, compelling, not quite. The segment excels as it turns to an almost noir-like expose of murder and cover-up within the sumo ranks, not so connected to Freakonomics’ thesis, but great film nonetheless.
Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight) directs “It’s not always a Wonderful Life,” looking for causes behind the drop in crime in the late 1990s. Jarecki punctuates television and film footage with attention-grabbing animation overlaid with audio clips and narration by Melvin Van Peebles, the noted filmmaker and actor. Rather than more innovative policing, harsher sentencing, changes in the crack market, stricter gun control strong economy, and more police officers, Levitt’s data argues that these causes can explain only about half of the 1990s crime drop. His explanation for the other half is one of the book’s most controversial theses. “Legalization of abortion in the 70s was one of the primary reason why crime rates dropped in the 90s because a whole generation of potentially unwanted children were never born. . . . They simply weren’t there to do the crime.”
The film’s final segment is directed by Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing (Jesus Camp) asking “Can a 9th Grader be Bribed to Succeed”—a brand new story based on Levitt’s research, but not told in the original book. Tracking an experiment at a Chicago high school, Grady and Ewing focus on two ninth grade boys tempted by $50 monthly incentives to improve the grades. Unlike their work in Jesus Camp, Grady and Ewing cannot make these kids likable or engaging. While one boy hits his benchmarks to get the money on the last month, the other remains insufficiently motivated. But neither show signs of changing their attitudes toward learning and achievement, and the experiment proves rather than refutes Dubner’s conclusion about the beauty of incentives: “you don’t really know what works. And governments think they know what works and they spend a huge amount of resources establishing incentives. . . but they are going to backfire in so many different ways that we can’t predict.” These kids might earn a limo ride home but for the long haul show no evidence of having the skills or desire to engage in their education. These incentives do not work.
Finally, Levitt and Dubner see their work as asking a different kind of question entirely, exploring what answers might come from a different framework. Freakonomics the film, like the book it is based on, doesn’t claim to offer the right answers, mind you, but definitely provocative ones that will keep you talking long after the credits have rolled.
