The Take

Naomi Klein, author of the bestselling anti-globalisation tome No Logo has in recent years become the lambasting, left wing, talking-head of choice for news panel discussions and documentaries (The Corporation). It was on such a cable news program that Klein was repeatedly pressed for solutions to what she said were the problems of economic globalisation (something she wasn’t prepared for).

Determined to find answers she subsequently found herself in Argentina with journalist Avi Lewis as they investigated how workers in the recently bankrupted country are taking back their jobs and their rights in The Take.

The recent success of theatrically released documentaries comes as no surprise when you consider that long form journalistic stories are pretty much absent from our TV screens, (at least on the commercial networks) and audiences are craving more than a three minute surface scan of a story. In The Take, Lewis and Klein meet a group of Buenos Aires factory workers who have decided that the value of their closed parts factory to be sold-off is equal to the wages they are owed and have decided to take it over and start producing. Their motto: “Occupy, Resist, Produce” is an echo of action taking place in bankrupted factories all over the once burgeoning middle-class country.

After setting the scene early on, Klein and Lewis take a back seat and allow the workers to tell their story, (which is extraordinarily affecting at times) whilst manufacturing a case against the types of IMF economic reforms that brought this once striving nation to its knees. They demonstrate the ability of the people to affect political change, and if nothing else The Take should certainly implant a couple of questions in the mind of viewers in regards to our own government’s stripping away of worker’s rights.

The Take rates 3 1/2 stars.