Jan 11, 2012         DVDs         by Sonja Heijn

Based on key ideas and theories in the bestselling book of the same name by economist Steven D. Levitt and co-writer Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics is a most unusual beast — a portmanteau documentary comprising four segments, each with a different director (or directors).

Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) directs ‘A Roshanda by Any Other Name’, in which the question, Does your name determine your destiny? is posed, and examined — after a fashion. The film itself is a loose entity, but this segment is especially insubstantial. There are a few genuinely interesting findings in among the vox pops and the animated sequences, but the gleeful, smart-arse narration is irritating all the way through.

In ‘Pure Corruption’, directed by Alex Gibney (Enron: the smartest guys in the room), statistical analysis is used to determine whether sumo matches are rigged. This is the strongest segment, with a clear narrative drive and some fascinating insights into the shadowy culture surrounding the sport.

‘It’s Not Always a Wonderful Life’, directed by Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight), examines the causal relationship between abortion legislation and falling crime rates in the US in the 1990s. It’s easily the most controversial of the segments, although the material is not as convincingly explained as it is in the book.

In the final segment, ‘Can a Ninth Grader Be Bribed to Succeed?’, Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing (Jesus Camp) follow the academic performance of two ninth-grade boys when they are given a financial incentive to improve their grades, as part of a school-wide experiment. This segment has warmth that the others lack; it offers a chance to connect with the boys, and the topic, on a human level — which is a welcome change.

In between each segment the authors talk about the themes of the book, crystallising the main ideas: correlation does not equal causality (‘the world gives you correlation; you need to work really hard to find causality’); economics is all about incentives (they ‘matter incredibly to understanding the world’). These conversations are slightly uncomfortable but there’s obviously a genuine rapport between the authors, and something appealing about their determination to make economics useful and interesting by applying it to questions that people care about.

Freakonomics works best as a light, humorous introduction to the book. It’s not quite coherent or substantial enough to stand alone, but certainly contains some interesting, counter-intuitive ideas that are worth exploring, and talking about.

6/10