Or maybe just consider him to be the REAL intelligent one? How about that man from the IRS, demanding money for battleships...and Martin said the last time battleships were used was during the Spanish American War, that would be going back about 40 years...you'd really pay money for something that hasn't seen any use in 40 years, and what it gave you, you gave back to begin with?
And if they did that movie today...oh boy, would everybody wet themselves laughing when he insisted the president's not getting paid with his money...match today's president with that statement, people would be sick from laughter.
And if you think about it, Martin explains he would pay if he knew it was for something good...you go into a store, you know what you'd pay for, but you just hear 'the government wants your money and they might return a scrap from time to time', that doesn't do much for you. I don't believe in paying for something that I don't know what it is, and how often is it really explained just WHAT your money goes to? And what more, do you see PROOF that the money went WHERE you were told it would go? And older people...see older people today trust too much, maybe back then they were a little more picky about who they emptied their wallet to.
Conservative, liberal, anarchist, I don't know what you'd call Martin, but he sure seemed to have a way with just about everything.
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UnholyBlackMetal
18 years ago
I think the Time Out Guide to Film summed this movie up brilliantly. Something along the lines of: If the working class poor were a vocal minority, this would be the equivalent of an uncle Tom movie.
There were good parts to it, but I couldn't help but feel like my intelligence was insulted by the end of it. Of course I have a really hard time with Meet John Doe too (though It Happened One Night is one of my favorites).
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familyguyantiflag
18 years ago
In the movie we have two characters:
One is a zainy free spirit who lives life to the fullest and doesn't care about money because "you can't take it with you". He got sick of the corporate rat race so he quit his job and never looked back. He opposes war and he wants to see the government do something about the unemployment situation.
The other character is a stuffy old business man who cares more about money than anything else. He thinks people who care about poverty are "emotional" and not logical. He would gladly uproot an entire neighborhood from their homes in order to make a profit. He despises the poor and thinks the rich are higher up on the moral order.
These two character descriptions are perfect portrayals of a stereotypical liberal and a stereotypical conservative. Now how is it sensical to make the liberal character hate paying taxes? Opposition to income taxes was (and still is) a conservative position.
This makes even less sense when you consider that the Grandpa character says later in the movie that he wishes something would be done about the unemployment situation. The irony here is that the government needs money to solve problems, and Grandpa was previously seen yelling "NOT WITH MY MONEY!" when asked to pay his taxes. This is some of the worst writing in the movie.
His logic is full of holes. The government created by the Constitution must be paid for by somebody. But Martin argues "the constitution was paid for a long time ago." This is completely missing the point. The fact is that it costs money to maintain the government created by the Constitution. Rights, freedoms, private property, and public goods and services all depend on the government. And the power of the government is dependent upon taxes.
A proper analogy would be walking into a resturaunt, ordering a huge meal, and then refusing to pay for it. You cannot object by saying:
"I won't pay. I don't believe in it."
"Show me what I get for my money"
"I don't want to pay this money so it can go to the head of your restaraunt."
Yeah, maybe it would be so funny that we'd "wet ourselves laughing", but the second you actually sit down and think about it, you'd realize that it's stupid and doesn't make a bit of sense.
If you don't know where your money goes, then you simply aren't paying attention. It takes all of 10 minutes to go online and look up the Office of Manegment and Budget and see how federal tax dollars are spent. If you object to were your money is going, you can use your vote to change it, and elect somebody else who wants to do things differently. However, I find it highly unlikely that a liberal in the 1930s would want to change the way FDR was doing things.
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novastar_6
18 years ago
Everybody tries to see a political side to it...but do they ever REALLY mention politics? Did anyone in the Sycamore family own up to being Liberal? No...how about the Kirbys? They belly-ache about a lot, but I never heard anything about Conservatives. Maybe there isn't any political side to it...after all, a man who doesn't worry about money, or about work, and is only slightly concerned about the economy of the work-force or rather lack of, can't very well be worried about politics, maybe he gave up on that as well.
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first_sentence
17 years ago
I think it is like that movie with Will Ferrell and Maggie Gyllenhaal, Stranger that Fiction. He is with the IRS and insists she pay taxes, which she hasn't been doing. She says that she did, but she withheld money because she doesn't want it to go to bull s hit. She pays enough to go to things that actually help people.
Your money does not just go to public schools, rec centers, health care, and shelters. It goes into pork barrel spending (frivolous government spending). Senators go use the taxpayers money to fund huge projects that make no sense (think of the Spruce Goose and other unused war planes from the Aviator with Leo Dicaprio. We spend money on some of the stupidest unused military projects and then complain that we don't have enough armored cars, which are actually important). Or how about ALaskan senator Ted Stevens. He wanted to spend 398 million dollars of federal tax money to build a giant bridge connecting Alaska with a nearby island. It is a remote island than can reach Alaska in ten minutes by ferry. Everyone on the island could have gotten their own jet for what it would have cost to build the bridge. Here's a link about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravina_Island_Bridge
You would probably do better to just give a lot of your money to charity rather than forking it over to wasteful government spending.
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Beau_Buffet
9 years ago
This is some of the worst writing in the movie.
Contradictions by a character doesn't necessarily mean contradictions in the plot.
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