Gratitude Revealed
I’ll be brief, blunt, and I won’t mince words. Gratitude Revealed is the kind of privileged bullshit that prevents any real progressive change from happening in this country. Leave it to a white, well-off boomer to make an entire movie about how everyone should just be grateful for what they have, without giving a second thought to those who have nothing to begin with.
Blame whichever political party you want, but it’s this kind of attitude — this, right here — that ends any conversation about poverty, hunger, war, the environment, addiction, police brutality, spousal abuse, mental health, and every other fucked up thing under the sun before it even gets started. Why bother recognizing the pain of others when it’s easier to simply “see the magic of the world around us," am I right? Why should I care when it’s easier to put my head in the sand and pretend everything everywhere is fine?
Gratitude Revealed is so chock full of tone-deaf, self-congratulatory platitudes that it might be comical if it weren’t so infuriating. Director Louie Schwartzberg (Fantastic Fungi) bombards us with a never-ending parade of depthless intellectuals who clearly have no connection to life outside their own small worlds, even though their philosophy insists that they are, in fact, deeply and spiritually connected to all life, or whatever. Despite what they claim, these people have secluded themselves from reality, and, in doing so, completely shut themselves off from any meaningful good they could do with their positions of privilege.
It’s incredible to me how Schwartzberg has made what is ostensibly a feature length TED Talk, just to pat himself and his dime-store philosophizing friends on the back. Even when he and his cavalcade of glassy-eyed messiah complexes accidentally brush up against very real issues like homelessness, they’re brushed aside with the kind of emotionless snobbery usually reserved for satire and parody.
How thick do you have to be to not realize that lines like “I know there’s bad things that happen in the world” — shown over a shot of homeless people pushing shopping carts — “but I choose to see the beauty in everything” are anything but unbelievably tasteless? I can only imagine that Schwartzberg and his talking heads truly revel in feeling superior to others, but have convinced themselves that they’re the good guys. It’s shameful.
Taking things a step further down the density trail, Schwartzberg seems very keen to show his cronies at their “best” by showcasing them in acts of service such as filling bowls at a soup kitchen. This would be fine if these scenes actually discussed the causes of homelessness or any thoughtful solutions to the nationwide crisis, but no. Instead, his team of oblivious blockheads spend their camera time congratulating themselves on how wonderful they are to be helping such a wretched group of poors. Again, shameful.
On occasion, Schwartzberg does stoop down from his lofty sense of self-satisfaction to talk to people who have actually faced real hardship, but he’s very careful to do so only after the worst of those hardships have passed. For example, we meet a group of women recently out of prison who are lamenting their time behind bars and professing how grateful they are to be out. But — and this is important — Schwartzberg doesn’t ask anyone who’s currently incarcerated about their level of gratitude. Nor does he ask anyone who is cold, sick, uninsured, underfed, exploited, or otherwise marginalized by a system that requires them to live in poverty so that he can live in luxury. I cannot stress enough how distasteful I find this mindset.
Perhaps the scariest part of Gratitude Revealed, though, is that it will probably find an audience eager to buy into this manipulative horseshit.
Grade: F. Not rated. Now playing at the Fine Arts Theatre
(Photo: Area 23a)
