The foreclosure of thousands of homes in Cleveland’s poor neighborhoods comes to vivid life in Jean-Stéphane Bron’s sad Cleveland vs. Wall Street. Because the city lawsuit seeking reparations from 21 Wall Street investment banks that made subprime loans was dismissed, the Swiss filmmaker told the story through a mock trial in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court before Judge Thomas Pokorny. Too bad he didn’t achieve even virtual justice.
Witnesses included Robert Kole, who quit the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department eviction squad because he couldn’t stomach throwing elderly people out of their homes; Frederick Kushen of Slavic Village, who lost a home at a sheriff’s sale; the powerful advocate Barbara Anderson, who continues to battle Wall Street and made then-presidential candidate Barack Obama promise he’d protect victims of subprime loans; and Peter J. Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute, an unapologetic believer in the “invisible hand” of unfettered capitalism.
Bron’s dialogue is moving and often witty, but far less eloquent than shots of potholed streets, windowless houses reduced to plywood and siding, graffiti-ridden residences stripped of utilities. The images Cleveland cinematographer Julien Hirsch depicts resemble a ghost town, though the aerial shots show it used to be a big city.
The most telling exchanges are between plaintiff’s attorney Joshua Cohen (“It’s our goddamn city,” he tells his family before the jury goes in to deliberate. “It’s not an academic exercise”) and drug dealer-turned-broker Keith Taylor, a man from East Cleveland, which he calls "the ghetto of ghettoes.” Taylor suggests he learned percentages from dealing dope, knowledge he could apply to peddle another addictive product: the subprime loan.
The jury, however, splits 5 to 3, one short of the necessary majority. The apparent reason? Cohen didn’t persuade it that the banks are out for themselves; Fisher, on the other hand, argued successfully for individualism, capitalism and the notion that the people who took out these loans should have known better.
Meanwhile, the foreclosure beat goes on: two families a day are evicted from Slavic Village homes, and Cleveland keeps shrinking. The well-staged Cleveland vs. Wall Street reminds us that since Obama took office, the banks have been rescued but the neighborhoods continue to die.
✭✭✭ 1/2
Reviews are scored on a four-star scale.
Cleveland vs Wall Street opens Friday, April 8, at the Capitol and Cedar Lee theaters.
WATCH: Cleveland Vs. Wall Street Trailer
