The watchwords around Join or Die are social capital and clubs versus loneliness. This engaging 99-minute documentary film, written and directed by the brother-sister team Pete and Rebecca Davis, focuses on why community engagement matters. It is based on work done by Harvard professor Robert Putnam in his book Bowling Alone.
Putnam did not originate the concept of social capital—the positive effect occurring when people band together to make the place where they live and work a better community. However, he popularized the term, and he brought attention to waning participation in American civic groups like Parent-Teacher Associations (PTA). The overall effect of Americans avoiding groups like PTA, the Kiwanis Club, and local bowling leagues is that they tend to work more hours, watch television as the main source of entertainment, and spend more time alone. Surprisingly the film does not address what the Internet and smart phone use has done to isolate people. One can only assume that Putnam’s research didn’t address how technology continues to speed up in its advances and that television was the start of this trend.
We see Putnam and his former student, director Pete Davis, walking along a country road discussing how Putnam researched his topic first in Italy and later in the United States. In the U.S., he discovered that the peak of social capitalism occurred in the 1950’s. Since that time, the American tendency has been to pursue personal goals alone with minimal help from outside groups. One take away from the film is that the better the government is at addressing people’s needs, the longer a person will live. Conversely government is only as good as the people participating in their government. This comes across to this reviewer as a call to arms in our own time when Americans are so divided.
A whole cast of known luminaries populate this film and promote Putnam’s findings—Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Senator Mike Lee, Princeton University professor Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., and various journalists like David Brooks and Gale King. While many of these familiar public figures are providing serious commentary, a humorous edge bleeds through. The effect is these speakers are not talking heads lecturing the audience. The immersive animations also aid in that light-handed approach.
The film has screened in many American film festivals and won such awards as Jury Prize for Best Feature (San Francisco Doc Fest, 2023) and Best Documentary Feature (Capital City Film Festival, 2023). Currently, the film is being screened across the U.S. in selected theaters.
