For 10 of the past 11 years, DOC NYC has screened the documentary feature that went on to win the Academy Award, and over the past 14 years, it has grown into an outsized destination for documentary filmmakers. Owned by New York’s IFC Center, the sprawling event takes place in November each year, and last year it had a record number of 1,000 industry attendees (roughly split between industry delegates and attending—many of them participating—filmmakers).
One of the more interesting documentaries screened this month was “Death & Taxes,” directed by Justin Schein, who has been a cinematographer on over 60 films and is the co-founder of Shadowbox Films. The film could not be more timely, as Trump and his billionaire buddies triumphantly take power and he offers them outrageous tax cuts and concessions and General Motors cuts 1,000 factory jobs. Of course, the white working class that supported him because of the price of milk and gas will receive much less from Trump than the oligarchy.
The film operates on two levels: on a personal father-and-son level and as an exploration of how the rich inveighed against estate taxes (“death” taxes in their words)—promoting the idea that the moneyed are unfairly penalized by excessive taxes and that the government is confiscating hard-earned wealth that they should be allowed to leave to their families. Implicit in their argument is that the public doesn’t deserve the money the government spends on them, the welfare state should be phased down, and progressive taxation is “un-American.” Given that estate taxes only impact a few thousand very, very rich people a year, their removal shouldn’t be a popular cause for most Americans.
Schein skillfully constructs his argument using experts like Robert Reich, Paul Krugman, Matthew Desmond, and a brief, striking appearance (my partiality) by my daughter Alissa Quart. These experts demolish the argument for removing estate taxes, speak of taxes serving the collective good. Reich trenchantly comments, “If more and more wealth can be generated and provided to heirs without paying any taxes, then we are on the way to a permanent aristocracy in America.” The director enlivens the discussion of taxation with film clips from Hollywood movies and some witty animation.
Schein’s political commitments are clear, but he doesn’t neglect interviewing political experts from the other side—like Republican pollster/strategist Frank Luntz, who believes that estate taxes are a form of tax discrimination and that they should be abolished. Luntz is a firm believer in the “trickle-down economics” policies (made infamous by President Ronald Reagan) which promote the idea that wealth is better distributed through charities and consumer spending rather than higher taxes for the wealthy.
What makes the film distinctive is less the interweaving of intellectual arguments for and against estate taxes than the personal story about Justin’s relationship to his difficult father, Harvey, a self-made man and driven record executive who created a privileged life for his family. Harvey was raised working class in Brooklyn, and growing up in the depression, he developed an obsession with frugality and saving money.
Harvey is someone Justin admires, but he is also volatile and controlling, given to shouting when angry. He is bigger than life, charming, and very bright (he graduated from Harvard University Law School) but given to making life hard for both his family and colleagues, with whom he tends to be abrasive and argumentative. Justin’s mother has a passion for dance, but Harvey insensitively seems blind to anything that doesn’t lead to financial success and shows little interest. His domination and her unwillingness to follow his master plan for retirement finally lead to their divorce.
Justin has partially made the documentary to better understand his father’s opposition to estate taxes (he wants the money to go to family, not people on welfare) and his FOX-watching habits and growing political conservatism. Justin himself has led a life of comfort and privilege, but from an early age was conscious of the gap between his Park Avenue world and the poor people who lived in East Harlem not many blocks away. Justin is totally there for his father when he is dying of cancer, but he ends the film with an affirmation of the American promise of a more equal society. However, his father’s self-interested, narrow vision has just been given a more dangerously corrupt and authoritarian twist by the Trump ascendancy than probably his father would have ever affirmed.
The film may not break much new ground, but it is a cogent avowal of liberal principles.
