The Divide. Film by Katherine Round. 2016. In UK cinemas from 22nd April 2016.
In 2009 Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett published The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, setting out a closely-argued plea for public policy which directly addresses inequality. Packed with graphs and statistics, the book challenges the dogma that deregulation and ‘free’ markets benefit everybody. Instead, it shows how these policies benefit the few at the expense of the many and that other countries, which tackle inequality directly, achieve prosperity on a much broader front.
Wilkinson and Pickett are epidemiologists, studying the social and institutional causes of disease and ill-health. For them, ‘equality’ is multidimensional, encompassing not just wealth and income, but physical and mental health, drug abuse, social mobility, obesity, violence and imprisonment. They treat ‘standard of living’ as just one element in the more significant category of ‘quality of life’.
So far so good: The Spirit Level is a valuable and informative book. But is it possible, or desirable, to make a film based on a book of this sort? A watchable film that doesn’t bore us to tears with worthy intentions and too many numbers? Surprisingly perhaps, the answer is ‘Yes’.
The Divide, a documentary film by producer/director Katherine Round, is not ‘the film of the book’ but is definitely ‘inspired’ by the book. It doesn’t reproduce the book’s graphs and statistics, or its comparisons between more equal and less equal countries. Instead it does what film does best: it explores a single powerful theme through personal experiences and stories. Its theme is the human cost of inequality, and the countries chosen to illustrate it are the UK and USA, the countries that since Thatcher and Reagan have pioneered a neo-liberal ‘economic experiment’ in deregulation and free-market excess.
In the course of the film we get to know seven or eight key characters. Some are trying to get by on low-paid, part-time contracts, such as Janet who works for Walmart in the USA, or Rochelle who is a care assistant in north-east England. There is Keith, consumed with rage and violence as he serves a 25 year prison sentence in the USA for possessing a tiny amount of dope. There is Darren from Glasgow, born into a working class community racked by unemployment and drugs: he’s a poet, a rapper, highly talented, struggling with alcoholism.
But this isn’t a film about poverty, it’s a film about the costs of inequality. So it also features the other victims: those with regular incomes, whose lives are blighted by terror of losing their jobs, their careers, or their nice houses. We meet Alden, a stressed-out psychologist who advises stressed-out executives how to cope with their stress. He’s stuck on a middle-class treadmill, and he knows it. And we meet Jen, a mother and housewife trapped in an exclusive gated community with its own private pecking-order of wealth and status, where neighbours despise her and her kids have no friends.
Beautifully shot, nicely paced, always utterly respectful of its characters, The Divide shows how inequality corrodes all our lives. Those at the bottom suffer material poverty, ill-health and short lives. And at every step above there is fear: fear of losing a job, losing income, losing a home, losing status, and fear – often irrational, but nonetheless powerful – of violence from those at the bottom.
Astonishingly, this is not a depressing film. It shows some of its characters fighting back, taking a stand, which is great. But its most memorable moments are human moments – such as when Leah, bringing up a family on a part-time job at Kentucky Fried Chicken, is trying to talk to the filmmaker. Her kids are making a racket and she bellows: ‘Shut up! Shut up now! Period!’ Then she catches the camera’s eye, grins, and bursts into rich, infectious laughter. Maybe that’s one answer to inequality: simply to grin, to laugh, to assert the unanswerable equality of a shared moment of joy.
This is a golden time for documentary film, and The Divide is among the best. See it if you can.
Martin Spence used to be a full-time trade union negotiator, and now writes about history, politics and ideas.