“This is a story about why you should join a club – and why the fate of America depends on it”.
When I first saw a promotion for Peter and Rebecca Davis‘s upcoming documentary Join or Die, I could not shake the intrigue that it generated. Shared with images of a bowling lane, I could not stop thinking about how a bowling alley could save America. The thesis the film initially presented sat with me, making it my most anticipated film of the 2023 South by Southwest Film Festival. Following my screening, I have an insatiable need to join a club.
The Downfall of Democracy
What is interesting is that my reaction to the film is not generated strictly by the analytical data provided, or its need for democracy to survive, but rather the expressed understanding that it is good for me – that it is good for everyone. The connections and interactions it provides have the potential to satisfy, in ways that I could never imagine. Not only does Join and Die present a strong thesis backed up by decades of research and analytics, it puts a visual representation of what we already know – clubs bring together communities.
As the film begins, interweaving various forms of multimedia to heighten its subject matter, while also making itself accessible, Join or Die presents its thesis early on. There is little filler between its opening scenes and its intended journey. For a documentary that runs around 100 minutes, it hits the ground running. Yet, as the audience settles in, so does the film, finding its central figure, the man who proposed the idea the film is based on – Robert Putnam. Having written and published “Bowling Alone” before the turn of the century, Putnam is the film’s core analytic. And while Join or Die has a variety of talking heads, including Hilary Clinton, and Pete Buttigieg, lending their knowledge and perspective, they all connect to Putnam and his decades of work in social capital.
Join or Die is a documentary completely aware of the diverse audience it has the hope and potential to reach. To understand how clubs can save or break democracy, the Davises take us back to Putnam’s earliest research in Italy in the 1970s. With Italy breaking into its own form of “states”, Putnam had the unique ability to quantify variables and present controls to the grouped factions. A rare opportunity in political science, Putnam looked at the prosperity of each new region, finding that those who had the highest success in their economy had a generous variety of clubs and organizations to be a part of. But it was not just what was available, it was the number of people who attended them.
As the first third of the film comes to an end with his study in Italy, Putnam and the film move into their second act, the discoveries in Italy seemingly applicable to all democratic societies – even the United States. While the film may have hit the pavement running, Join or Die is constantly aware of its pace, giving time for visual aids and animation to work with the words and explanations of its talking heads. The film is a meaty examination of decades of social capital, and its subsequent downfall and viewers are given the time to understand every morsel it has to offer. With such a dense subject matter, one would assume the film begins to feel heavy and tiresome, but Join or Die never overextends its audience, keeping each moment light – much of the infusion of energy and light-heartedness coming from its visual aids and its main subject Robert Putnam.
Conclusion:
By the film’s conclusion, Join or Die will succeed in its mission – you will want to join a club. But you will also have a deeper understanding of the core of democracy. While the ending of Join or Die could have used tighter editing, it works hard to finish on a positive note, encapsulating the hope of humanity and the United States. It wants us to believe that all is not lost, lifting any of the density that may have lingered in its final analytics of the downfall of American democracy and the reasons for its occurrence.
And while Join or Die does prove its thesis, it also constantly remains open to conversation, lending itself not only to rewatches but deep conversations on both the history of American society and the current state it is in. Join or Die proves itself vital and relevant, a necessary documentary that promises the conversation will continue long after the credits have rolled.
Join or Die premiered at the 2023 SXSW Film Festival on March 12, 2023!
Watch Join or Die
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