Adults in the Room
A seemingly faithful diorama of the 5 months in which Varoufakis lead the Greek finance ministry, until being ostracised by the European institutions that turned Tsipras into his own anathema. ευχαριστώ.
The film is based on Varoufakis’ account, so it’s probably biased. However, this also has the advantage of knowing what will happen in the future, and it doesn’t look pretty for Schauble. Turns of reality has a left-leaning bias… The thesis on Tsipras is that he was turned by the EU (mostly Germany), not that he is a traitor, a slick politician with a set of morals that he can switch to another on demand.
As the director explained afterwards, this is not supposed to put Varoufakis personally on a pedestal (I say he does that himself without any help), only the policies he has defended against an oligarchic EU. He is still a controversial figure that remains political active, so that matter is not yet settled on the history books.
When it does, they will say he’s a product of his time. He can be compared with Assange or Snowden: there were rumours and obscure reports about the double dealings of the EU, but his transgressions laid the whole thing bare, with tangible proof to go from conspiracy theories to verifiable facts.
While there are timid changes brought about by Snowden’s revelations, Varoufakis was thoroughly destroyed, and the institutional changes were non-existent.
Jeroen sticks to his guns all his mandate, ending up finishing his mandate insulting the Southern countries, implying they all spend the money on wine and hookers. Junkers has drunkenly ended his 8 years saying treating Greece in this way was “a mistake”. The informal Eurogroup remains informal and all powerful (veto power over elected officials and national parliamentary). It’s now lead by one of the PIIGS, an Orthodox high priest of the church of austerity which overrides elected parliaments, including his own.
If you already know how the story ends, the film turns from a series of victories before the final defeat, to a bunch of bittersweet “victories”. Note the glorified cameo by Valeria Golino, of Escape from LA fame (amongst other things).
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.