Thomas Piketty spent 2014 being called a rock star. This was when the French economist’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century had become a bestseller, a popular Christmas gift with a stark message for capitalism — evolve or die. Now, he graduates to film star with a curiously timed documentary based on his breakthrough work. Events of the past six years barely register. Still, do any of us feel more secure about the future today?
We begin with an ending — the fall of the Soviet empire and what Piketty calls the fraud of communism. As in print, the question is whether capitalism too is now collapsing. Unlike the book, which suggested answers over several hundred pages of data, director Justin Pemberton takes the scenic route of archive film and talking heads. Piketty himself is seen sparingly. (Among co-star economists and political scientists are the FT’s Rana Foroohar and Gillian Tett.) We rewind again into an episodic history of market economics, involving Adam Smith, colonialism, the factory age, big bang, the 2008 crisis and frayed unease since, illustrated with the lifestyles of the super-rich. “Jetplanes, islands, tigers on a gold leash,” Lorde sings on the soundtrack.
Engaging as it is, more than half of the film goes by like this, capitalism presented as a 250-year-old basket case, forever reliant on messy pick-me-ups (military spending, credit booms). Yet this isn’t even the argument. The argument, finally, is less that the system offers a bumpy ride, more that it has taken us somewhere few of us want to be. Critics of Piketty will note no mention of the benefits of capitalism — innovation, millions lifted out of poverty. We skip straight to the countermotion, that it has been unable to sustain them, with generations now poorer than their parents and facing harder, possibly shorter lives. If Piketty is a rock star, the film paints capitalism as a supergroup whose biggest hits were hugely popular, but are long in the past. New material has not been well received.