Live-In Maid

This weekend I watched a lovely little movie from Argentina, called Live-In Maid. It takes place during the 1990s financial crisis, as Beba, an upper-middle-class woman struggles to find the money to pay her maid Dora, who has lived with her for 28 years.
Obviously money is an important part of the relationship between the two women, as one is an employee of the other. But it's more complicated than that-- in some ways, they are like family.

I found the circumstances of the movie quite resonant given the current economic situation in the US. In the movie, money is tight and lots of people are trying to find work. Beba tries to sell upscale cosmetics, but has very little success. She's left having to pawn her belongings to try to pay Dora the several months' worth of wages she owes her. Beba is embarrassed and ashamed, and can't seem to get her head around the idea of cutting her expenses, by moving to a smaller apartment or not having her hair done.

Meanwhile, Dora owns a little house outside the city, which she is slowly improving with the money she earns as a maid. Even if Beba can't pay her, we know there are still other wealthy people who will hire her. Dora is calm and in control, while Beba is getting desperate because of the disparity between her income and the lifestyle she thinks she has to have.

This is not a simplistic story of a haughty rich lady and her long-suffering maid-- it's far more nuanced, and somehow it really rings true. I was also surprised to learn that the woman who played the maid was actually a first-time actress who had actually worked as a housekeeper in the past-- her performance certainly measured up to that of the woman who plays Beba, who is one of Argentina's most famous actresses. All in all, I definitely recommend the film!

You can read the New York Times review of the film here, and it's available on Netflix.

It's Not All That Wonderful A Life

If you have a Grinchy little streak of cynicism, read this article from today's New York Times:

Wonderful? Sorry, George, It’s a Pitiful, Dreadful Life

“It’s a Wonderful Life” is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your oppressively perfect wife. It is also a nightmare account of an endless home renovation.

It's also about a banking crisis prompted by seeming fraud, and very real negligence:

And what about that banking issue? When he returns to the “real” Bedford Falls, George is saved by his friends, who open their wallets to cover an $8,000 shortfall at his savings and loan brought about when the evil Mr. Potter snatched a deposit mislaid by George’s idiot uncle, Billy (Thomas Mitchell).

But isn’t George still liable for the missing funds, even if he has made restitution? I mean, if someone robs a bank, and then gives the money back, that person still robbed the bank, right?

I checked my theory with Frank J. Clark, the district attorney for Erie County upstate, where, as far as I can tell, the fictional Bedford Falls is set. He thought it over, and then agreed: George would still face prosecution and possible prison time.

“In terms of the theft, sure, you take the money and put it back, you still committed the larceny,” he said. “By giving the money back, you have mitigated in large measure what the sentence might be, but you are still technically guilty of the offense.”

The movie's two scenarios of life in Bedford Falls are meant to show that it's a much better place to live due to George's presence there. But maybe that wouldn't be the case long term. The supposedly nightmarish George-was-never-born Pottersville can be seen as a vibrant, active town with bright lights and lots of people driving an entertainment-based economy:

Not only is Pottersville cooler and more fun than Bedford Falls, it also would have had a much, much stronger future. Think about it: In one scene George helps bring manufacturing to Bedford Falls. But since the era of “It’s a Wonderful Life” manufacturing in upstate New York has suffered terribly.

On the other hand, Pottersville, with its nightclubs and gambling halls, would almost certainly be in much better financial shape today. It might well be thriving.

Wow, pretty harsh. I'm sure most people would still prefer to focus on the movie's warm-hearted message about valuing family and friendship!

Anthony Lane on "Filth and Wisdom"

I love Anthony Lane's film reviews in the New Yorker-- sometimes he is just scathing! Here's his take on Madonna's recent directorial debut:

What vexes me most about “Filth and Wisdom” is the economics. Madonna has been a global star for decades. She has amassed a fortune, much of which presumably remains intact. She can’t have spent all of it on jodhpurs and conical bras. So why, when it came to launching herself as a film director, did she limit her budget to $365.23? Such, at any rate, is my estimate for the funding of “Filth and Wisdom.” If the actors were paid according to their talents, they cannot have cost more than forty bucks.

Yowza-- that's gotta hurt, even if you're wearing protective garb such as jodhpurs and conical bras!

Movies About Money: Surfwise

I watched a very interesting movie the other night, called Surfwise. It's a documentary about Doc Paskowitz, a man who gives up a stable, conventionally successful life to travel around the country, surfing as much as possible while living out of a 24-foot camper... with his wife and 9 children!
The movie is about a lot of things: following your dreams, being a non-conformist, family relationships and of course, surfing, but there is a lot of interesting stuff about money. Doc says he hates money and feels trapped by it. His children remember him feeling happiest when he's literally down to his last dime. The kids have a fun childhood, traveling all the time and never going to school, but as you can imagine, some of them have mixed feelings about all this freedom, and they haven't necessarily continued to embrace poverty.
It's definitely a movie well worth watching, check it out!

Charles Van Doren in The New Yorker

I'm always catching up on a backlog of New Yorker magazines-- in the July 28th issue, there was a "Personal History" piece by Charles Van Doren, infamous for his role in the 1950s quiz show fraud scandal. I found the tone of the article a bit hokey and over-earnest, somehow, but of course I was interested in the role money played in Van Doren's troubles.

Here's what happens when he first meets the TV producer who gets him onto the show "Twenty One," the man who later tells him to lie about the outcome being rigged:

I told him that I was an instructor of English [at Columbia]-- a long way from being a professor. I was not comfortable talking about myself, especially when he asked me how much an instructor of English made. When I told him, he just looked at me.

Van Doren decides to do the show, and cooperates with the producers as they feed him answers and even tell him how to speak them. He plays the perfect, handsome, wholesome young man, and audiences eat it up as he appears to outsmart the unpleasant, nerdy Herb Stempel. He goes on to win $128,000 before the producers decide the next bit of drama their sponsors need is to have Van Doren lose. But by then, he's a celebrity, and he easily gets a job with NBC which pays him $50,000 a year, which would be the equivalent of almost $350,000 today.

Eventually, there is an investigation of the rigged quiz shows-- Van Doren lies repeatedly to investigators and then finally fesses up at a Congressional hearing. Disgraced, he loses his TV job, doesn't show his face at Columbia for over 40 years, and spends the rest of his working life as an editor and publisher. In the early 1990s, he is approached by the producers of the movie Quiz Show, in which he is played by Ralph Fiennes. They offer him $100,000 to be a consultant on the film. Van Doren writes,

Our family had a meeting, sitting around our kitchen table. John, our son, was for my taking the money. "They're going to make the movie anyway, whatever you do," he said. "Everybody else is making money out of it, why shouldn't you?"
Gerry [Van Doren's wife] agreed-- they would say whatever they wanted-- "But taking the money gives them a kind of license."

Van Doren wants to take the money, but backs off when his wife says she'll leave him if he does.

It's strange to think that this guy's downfall was so tied to a desire for money. I don't know the exact circumstances of his family, but they seem to have been quite comfortable-- his father and uncle were famous intellectuals (remember when America had those?) and he implies that the family had plenty of money when he recounts a conversation with his father in which he is told "you can do anything you want," as in "you can move back to Paris to try working on your novel again." When his parents die, he inherits their home and land, which includes "two houses, several barns, fields and woods" and all the trappings of a gentleman farmer. Many articles about his life say he was the son of a "wealthy family."

I think Van Doren's New Yorker piece was ultimately a bit of a cop-out. He portrays himself as a decent sort who got caught up in what passes for WASP tragedy: a question of honor in which he gets caught with his pants down, feels distraught for a while but then learns to follow the way of truth and intellect with the help of a good woman's love, yada yada. I'd like to have seen him really deal with the meat of the issue: why someone with such a privileged upbringing was ashamed of his salary and was willing to lie and cheat in pursuit of money he really didn't need. For someone of his upbringing at that time, I think it would have been considered beneath him to worry so much about how much money he made, rather than focusing on the prestige of an intellectual career. I wish he had acknowledged that it was his greed more than his lying that made him a traitor to his class.

Money Music Movie

As I wrote in the previous post, I'd been listening to Björk a lot this weekend. I've been wanting to do another "money music" post, and I thought it would be pretty cool if I could somehow discover financial lessons in the lyrics of Björk. Well, I will try to tackle that, after I finish extracting money secrets from the lyrics of early Cocteau Twins albums.
In the meantime, I found it very interesting that the first thing that popped up when I googled "Björk money" was this:

I thought this was funny because when I saw Dancer in the Dark a few years ago, I HATED it, with the exception of the goofy song and dance routines with Catherine Deneuve cavorting around the factory, which were at least kind of fun. I am not usually that hard to please with movies-- I can't think of anything else I've seen in the last few years that I would say I hated. Perhaps the surroundings in which I watched the movie didn't help-- I was visiting my parents and rented it to watch with them. From the minute the opening credits began, my mother started asking "What is this? What are we looking at? What's happening?" as she often does with movies, which always makes me want to snap at her "how the hell do you think I'm supposed to know? I just got here too!" And my father just kind of snorted and gave up watching the movie after about 45 minutes at the most.
So I wish the British money-back guarantee had applied to US video rentals, as I certainly would have tried to take advantage of it!