Life and Debt

As a documentary 'Life and Debt' has many merits one of the most apparent and significant of which is the highly imaginative and effective way that it draws a complex concept into the form of an 80 minute film. A film with so much to say necessarily risks either becoming boring or inaccessible, however Life and Debt suffers from neither of these. Ideas are treated elegantly and efficiently, and invariably illustrated with footage of entirely appropriate and often poignant examples, which in turn allows for excellent pacing. These assets allow what could have been a very dry and abstract film to instead comfortably hold the audience's interest. By way of criticism I would say that on certain occasions subtitles were probably required to render the material fully accessible to an international audience, as the accents/dialect (and cultural constructions of language) are such that the meaning of speakers is periodically unclear. But this and what other minor failings exist pale in comparison to its strengths.

As a development worker in Jamaica, I can say that there is a lot of painful accuracy in the movie. Yes, tourists do act that badly, almost unanimously if you only count the ones who spend their time here locked away in a guarded resort. And now over half of ever tax dollar goes to paying foreign debt...

This is a really tragic and shattering film. I saw it a few days ago in New York at a lower East side cinema. It is a very honest and yet artistically distinguished portrait of the demise of a Caribbean nation - Jamaica. Interspersed with the cold, hard facts of how the international community has loaned the country money at predatory interest rates, and then dumped products on Jamaica's undeveloped markets, thus destroying native industries, are scenes of tourists enjoying Jamaica's bounties, oblivious to the nature of the natives' distress.

The woman who made this film narrates it herself, and she wrote a book on the subject before she made this film. So her credentials for knowledge about the subject are very strong. She employs a few cinematic flourishes, such as the blurred-edge-of-screen effect when she shows poor Jamaicans digging about in a garbage dump. The soundtrack is replete with great reggae songs, including the potent and topical title track.

Basically, this film is more important in its 90 minutes than about a hundred typically vapid Hollywood productions stacked back to back. This film teaches you something about the world - about the exploitation of the weak, about the myth of the "helping" nature of the IMF and the World Bank, and about the everyday lives of desperately poor third world people. All proponents of "globalization" should see this film, and then be required to defend their views to the people who have been victimized by globalization's cruel and relentless march. Similarly, everyone who works for the major media in the US should see this, and should be ashamed of themselves for defending the policies that have contributed to the downfall of a proud and beautiful people such as those of Jamaica. And silence is the major defense employed on behalf of such policies.

For anyone who wonders "why they hate us," watch this documentary and the mystery will be solved. It thoroughly documents how the US, the WTO, and the IMF have systematically destroyed every aspect of Jamaican economic opportunity and culture.

The US didn't abolish slavery in the 19th century; they simply outsourced it. Take a look inside the Kingston Free Zone and you'll see the slaves still at work. Visit a Jamaican banana plantation and learn about how the economy of a sovereign nation was subjugated in the name of "free trade."

In short, fellow fat Americans, pull your heads out of your globalizing butts and watch this film, and then try -- for just a moment, at least -- to put yourself on the other side of the coin. Imagine how you would feel about a foreign agency that took away your livelihood, that treated you like chattel, that demanded you stop making a living so that a transnational corporation could capture the last 5% of a market share.

Wouldn't you hate them, too?

Life and Debt is an arresting, soul-stirring documentary with fantastic images and a story that will haunt you long after the movie is over. I hope that watching it makes you reconsider what you know about how the world works economically, and the role of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

This film is an adaption of Jamaica Kincaid's novel "A Small Place," originally based on the story of Antigua (changed to Jamaica for the purposes of this film). If you enjoy the movie, be sure to read the book. In the film, as in the novel, Kincaid's voice-over narration is a powerful reminder of the complicated relationship between tourist and native, powerful and powerless, oppressors and oppressed. I would recommend this documentary to anyone interesting in how developed nations like the United States affect the development of Third World countries like Jamaica, even if you know nothing about it.