Wanted to respond to this AT LEAST once more, but I've been visiting so much with family and friends in Michigan that I haven't had the time. Tonight, I do.
There's so much here that speaks truth to me too. I do think this time is here in many ways. Gone are the secure jobs and pensions. I guess I also see so many middle class people struggling that it's hard for me to paint a broad brush on the middle class experience. Yes, there are those who are complacent, but that's not everyone.
We went from the gilded age to the age of an expanding middle class largely because of expanding (and what seemed like enshrining) workers' rights, to what we see now, which feels like the beginning of another gilded age, so I totally see what you're seeing insofar as people getting pushed out of the middle class. In that, Leigh's view into the world of the middle-class can seem antiquated just over a decade after its release. With that said, these people still give their assent to the ruling class at the ballot box and through basic inertia, persistent in their determination to make things as they were as opposed to embracing a new reality, however dire it may currently seem, and looking for a solution.
That leads to the whole "overthrowing the masters" thing, and all I want to emphasize is that, unlike communist revolutions of the past, a common vision amongst my friends at DSA and other likeminded people I've met is that it's nonviolent in nature, and without one particular person being able to lead it. Without going too in depth, it involves replacing the current capitalist structure that allows private wealth to accumulate into the hands of a few elites with a more egalitarian system where everyone has a stake in their (our) business and any surplus in production goes to the welfare of the many, through health care, education, universal pensions, etc., and not the enrichment (private jets, etc.) of the few. Anything more than this really does need to go to the Politics thread, but I wanted to clarify this, as I think the Cold War, Chariman Mao, Stalinism, and Reagan's bloody pursuit of communists, even when they had been selected in popular elections, has warped just about everyone's views of what a government and economic system by and for regular people would look like.
Saying "Gerri is powerless to directly affect change in others" is a statement that is too broad a stroke. She may have had many successful outcomes in her career. Never and always statements are hard for me to get behind.
It's not a judgment, though. It only is meant to hint at the complexity of helping others or changing human behavior.
I was unsuccessful in presenting my arguments for the decency and admirable qualities about this particular couple and therefore them being a valuable ideal. I do think that the odds were against me from the get go. The condemnation of the middle class is entrenched in your world view and I can find some understanding in it from your words.
A long time ago, sedaleus (a filmspotter) took issue with my negative reaction to In the Mood for Love. He said something to the affect of, "Not everything is about you." He was absolutely right, but he was also a little wrong. When it comes to movies and how we react to them, it is all about us. We come to a movie fully ourselves and that's why our experiences are so individual.
I mean, you made your point well, I just don't agree. Far as coming to the discussion with your own worldview as a part of it, that is to me an intuitive truth. To tell someone "not everything is about you," seems to me like some sort of defense mechanism or an insubstantive response to substantive criticism that you don't agree with. However much my opinion on a film is colored by my hopes and dreams for the world, people still have to tell me why I'm wrong and address my exact criticisms. Otherwise, I'm probably not going to listen to anything they say. You, however, made many valid points about the couple and the general direction of the film that I absorbed. That's what makes a worthwhile conversation. Yet at this point, I think we're more firmly in a philosophical place than anywhere too close to the film Another Year. That is not without its value, however.