I'd never even heard of this film until a couple of weeks ago. I'm a recent convert to the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek. He writes about popular culture but does it in a really surprising and non-intuitive way. He's also a fairly compulsive writer about Marxism. Unlike in the other films he's made (which gradually I'm staring to watch) in this he's one voice among several other philosophers and critics. What I found fascinating and really energizing is the way you get a sense of a Big Question playing out in real time. The film is talking about the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 but it's still a film that talks to the here and now: from national debt crises to ecological crisis, it's all brilliantly pieced together like a global jigsaw. Zizek argues that communism today is actually a question of salvaging "the commons" by which he means the "commonwealth" or the combined value of the natural world and its resources. We all breathe the same air and drink the same water. It sounds simple but when you start to unravel the threads it goes to the heart of the way the global economy is run and the profit motive driving it. Doing some research on the other philosophers involved it seems this is a forgotten classic of a film. I can't find anything to compare it with. I recommend it to anyone studying politics or economics.
Review of Marx Reloaded
