tieman64
"Economics is a form of brain damage." - Hazel HendersonThe privileged berate themselves in "Please Give", an intermittently interesting drama by director Nicole Holofcener, a director who specialises in female neuroses. The plot? Catherine Keener players Kate, a vintage furniture seller who acquires money by selling, at exorbitant prices, the furniture of the recently deceased. She essentially exploits the kin of the dead, getting valuable pieces for less than they're worth because surviving relatives are too preoccupied with grief to haggle over prices. There are other subplots in the film – Kate's husband has a brief affair, Kate's daughter assuages insecurity with commodities, a pair of sisters struggle with love, loss and personal responsibility etc – but it's the money angle that's most interesting. Because Kate is stricken with guilt over the way she does business, she engages in games of self-justification, compensating by being charitable to homeless people or volunteering at special-needs schools. But acts of charity don't help Kate and do little to help others. She remains guilty.The film abounds in interesting contradictions, Kate caught between the dog-eat-dog cynicism of free-market capitalism and an impulse to be ethical, to share with and care for others. Because of this she is supremely self-loathing, ashamed of her wealth. In economics, the neo-classical defence of this, of "wealth", is that the economy is not zero sum, that "wealth" can both forever increase and rationally "spread out", like some perpetual motion machine in which any and all imbalances are overcome by fiscal velocity and "benevolent liquidity". Critiques tout the flip-side; gains here are at the expenses of losses elsewhere, debt based systems breed bondage and loci of power, economics doesn't take into account the acquisition of land and how money enters the system and the economy is pathologically kept afloat by illusions/faith/denial (the continuous birth of new players, the deferring of debt and even death, various false mathematical/philosophical presuppositions etc). In this regard Kate's an atypical American; she's your successful, self loathing liberal woman caricature. Full-bore hippie in Versace.Another of the film's subplots deals with altruism/guilt/exploitation in a different manner. Here, a lab technician (Rebecca Hall) who administers mammograms spends all her free time caring for her 92 year old grandmother, a cranky woman who doesn't appreciate anything Rebecca does. Rebecca's sister, played by Amanda Peet, decries Rebecca for taking care of this nuisance, a nuisance who doesn't deserve to be taken care of and who seems to simply be exploiting Rebecca. Nevertheless, Rebecca believes it is her obligation to "give". So the film – its title is a plea "to give" - abounds in interesting contrasts. Materialism, self-interests, an allegiance to capitalism on one hand, guilt, feigned, forced and genuine compassion on the other. The film then ends with an interesting moment; Kate buys her daughter an inordinately expensive gift, a complex act which manages to affirm capitalism, play to Kate's more selfless desire to "give" - no matter how irrational the act seems - and demonstrates how socioeconomic structures colour selfless acts. Love and charity are seen to be irrational, unsustainable even, under the logic of the dollar. Charity itself is a type of ethic that avoids issues of complicity and co-responsibility for misery, and is maintained largely because the bourgeoisie desires to redress social grievances only in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society. That the film fails to go further is because it's engaged in a game of dichotomies, your usual left/right, socialism/capitalism duality.All economics is both biology and physics. It's a transfer of energy. All organisms attempt to maximise the capturing of energy, expending less than they take in. Extrapolate this to the national level and one sees that capitalism itself, as an organism, is designed to maximise extraction. It's what Howard Odum proposed as the 4th thermodynamic law, or 4th principle of energetics; systems "evolve" to maximise intake, leading to the hypertrophic nature of all systems, which have a cancerous predisposition for expansion. Indeed the market, by design, abhors limits. It is obsessed with expansion. Boundaries must be transgressed, worked-around, cheated. What psychologists refer to as the death-drive is mirrored (as well as a lot of other male biological imperatives) exactly by free-market capitalism: there is a pervasive desire for unrestrained, unregulated, limitless "jouissance". You then eventually reach the point where the extraction of energy from people and the planet out-paces birth rates and the planet's ability to "produce energy". It's the clichéd "infinite growth on a finite planet" problem - which in turn has led to proponents of economic homeostasis - though in reality, the planet's not quite finite. The total "matter" on Earth remains the same, the machine just need more of it and faster. And the Earth can't keep up. Hence Kate's dilemma: extracting harms others.What the film does is ignore the fact that personal crises and ecological dislocations are influenced by cultural factors and have their primary sources in social dislocations. The very notion of "dominating nature" has its roots in both the Churches of Scientific Rationality and the constant domination of human by human (hierarchies that bring people into subjugation to gerontocracy, patriarchies, military chiefdoms, capitalist, religious or bureaucratic systems of exploitation etc). Such "ruthlessness", in which a great many humans are as exploited as the natural world itself, is actively supported by many people, under the assumption that this is "how nature is" and "how nature works". These are the same people who, a million times in their daily lives, behave like they believe the opposite. Obey a traffic light and you're asserting man's ability to organise, change, rise, stave off chaos. Nature is contingent, and capitalism actually doesn't require one to believe the worst of his fellow man, but hinges on the opposite, that man is innately "good". In a sense, what is thus required is a legislating of morality.8.5/10 - Worth one viewing.
meeza
Please give me a few minutes of your time to read my punhilistic review of the indie comedy "Please Give". Well-renowned Independent film director Nicole Holofcener has given us another fine character-driven talky film. Holofcener- regular Catherine Keener stars as Kate, a middle-age owner of a used goods store which she runs with her husband Alex. Alex and Kate have a teenage daughter named Abby who is going thorough the standard adolescent angst. Kate is a giver and has a habit of giving out food and money to the homeless. She is almost like a homeless person's "quasi-groupie"; sort of speak. On the home-front, Kate and Alex would give their right nostrils for their older geriatric neighbor Andra to give herself to heaven or hell, so they can then expand their apartment when the walls come crumbling down. The problem is that Andra is like an infinite android who is ha ha ha ha stayin' alive, stayin' alive; Andra is not the sweetest granny on the block either. Andra's granddaughters Rebecca & Mary look after her with random visits; Sweet Rebecca being more the caretaker and egocentric Mary being more a la Jack Nicholson caretaker in "The Shining". I would give you more subplot points of "Please Give", but I would then be giving you too much information and thereby would ruin the viewing experience of this enjoyable little movie. Holofconer, who also scribed the film, once again excels in writing engaging characters. Her direction was also very sharp. Someone please give this woman an Oscar nomination already! The "Please Give" cast was giving it, giving it, giving it right. The consistent Keener once again shined with her Kate work. Oliver Platt was hilarious as the clever Alex. And the sister act of Rebecca Hall as Rebecca and Amanda Peet as Mary excelled in their astute performances. Hall continues to impress with every role. Ann Morgan Guilbert was grand as the scene-stealer granny Andra. Sarah Steele was not exactly a scene- stealer, but she was very impressive in her first acting performance playing the "craving for $200 jeans" teen Abby. I also enjoyed the bit performances of Thomas Ian Nicholas as Rebecca's vertically-challenged new boyfriend, and of Lois Smith as his grandma. "Please Give" has all the indie film ingredients that gives it cinematic justice. And even though I have exceeded my punmeter in this review by giving you way too many undesired puns, I still do desire that you please give 90 minutes of your time with a "Please Give" experience. I do care if you don't give a ….. so please give it a chance! ***** Excellent
ThurstonHunger
Karma was once a foreign word in English, it remains a foreign concept. Generally it is depicted as a sort of yo-yo, when in fact it is probably some askew aspect of string theory. An 11th dimension connection between disparate people, times and events.This film worked for me perhaps better than other viewers. While there were some treacly sentiments, how can I not like a film rooted in questions like:How come I am not a better person even when I try?How much did it cost to make (or buy from a bereaved relative) this thing?Whatever happened to the Roches?Hey, I had not heard their Moonswept album, did not even know they reunited. Their cover of Paranoid Larry's "No Shoes", which you can listen to at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nh2T7Q2LfHswhile a bit repetitive, does sort of parallel the spirit and whimsy of this film. Toss in a frazzled Catherine Keener (is there any other), a flawed but charming Oliver Platt (are these people acting or just terribly well-cast?), and a role for a cranky old woman (not enough of those) and you've got yourself a film.I just watched the trailer, and it misleadingly puts the comedy completely at the forefront, but the soul-searching of Keener is what made this film a little bit more than an excellent ensemble juggling the urbane and the polite. Somehow this film struck that spot inside me that feels life is unfair (even when I have a pretty damn fair share myself in the big scheme of things), but even though we know life may be unfair, you've still got to fake it.And for me it's easier to fake it when the Roches hum a few bars...
