The documentary aims to provide a structured critique of the world economic system, founded on neoliberal ideology, as it consolidated through the twentieth century. Starting quickly from Adam Smith, the work focuses above all on the events that go through the crisis of '29, the Keynesian politics and that of post-war welfare, the claims of the '60s and' 70s with the consolidation of the middle class, then lingering over in particular on the rise and affirmation of the Chicago school, which, since the late 1970s, ideologically reaffirms the need for less state intervention (considered a cause of public debt and inflation) and total freedom of the economic system, seen as a natural source of wealth and well-being for people. In the story, the neoliberal ideology is told as conceived by the economist Milton Friedman and then, in fact, sponsored and applied by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. The story includes digressions on the Chilean affair of the early 1970s and the neo-colonial policy of exploiting developing countries, implemented through the debt mechanism. Finally, even the realities of China and Russia (80s and 90s) are quickly introduced as being affected by the same ideology and therefore by the same effects. In the background, the contrast between democracy and neoliberalism constantly appears, where the latter tends to reduce the former. The volume ends with the development and enlargement of the European Union, therefore probably at the end of the last century.
The narration is based on a careful and competent choice of historical events and on many interviews with journalists and economists, of evident stature. As a whole, however, it appears (even unnecessarily, given the explicit meaning of the contributions) a little too prepackaged and excessively guided in the off-screen voice by the thesis that is intended to be demonstrated. The same opening is deliberately and strongly aimed at immediately establishing a prejudice in the viewer, which is not very useful, since the plot itself of the story well supports the thesis that it intends to support. While the technical and narrative workmanship of the work and the treatment of the individual elements of the story appear very professional and supported by an excellent historical knowledge, the viewer unconsciously (but not too much) identifies the lack of a complete and therefore objective vision of the events, in particularly in the absence of the role played in the postwar period by the opposition of the blocs and the scarce relevance given to the actual imbalances that the State, or rather politics, had actually generated in the economy itself at the end of the 1970s, through corruption, inefficiency, ideology, decommissioning. Hence, the contrast between social democratic and neoliberal views appears more as a struggle between good and evil, in which unidentified "occult wills" act, rather than as a battle between two worldviews. The idea that neoliberalism was deliberately supported in order to influence and indoctrinate the political-economic culture of the time is underlined too much, when it is evident that this happened for all the ideological visions then existing. In short, the idea of directing "great old men" in flesh and blood prevails, rather than that of a system that, intrinsically and independently of its interpreters, creates imbalances and inequalities, if not managed, limited and moderated from the outside (State, democracy, welfare). Perhaps, a lesser tendency to suggest the existence of a personalization of evil and an unidentified perverse will of some, coupled with a greater analysis of how the capitalist system automatically generates wealth in the few and poverty in many, could have been a cut better interpretative and also more consistent with the story itself.
It is therefore a very appreciable work, which certainly represents a fundamental contribution to an independent historical reflection on facts that are often deliberately forgotten today. A more careful description of the mechanism and of the "objective" interests of the neoliberal system and the avoidance of an a priori and pre-packaged judgment (and of a too personalistic interpretation), would have better respected the critical sense of the spectator, capable of drawing his conclusions from such a well-crafted narrative.
