Close to Home: Scenes from a Recession

New York's Upper East Side is generally associated with pricey boutiques and stretch limos, but as this PBS-aired Frontline special makes clear, even this locale is not immune to the current wave of job losses, business failures, and foreclosures. Filmmaker Ofra Bikel listens to customers at a hair salon as they talk about weathering one of the most brutal economic downturns since the Great Depression, including a 40-year-old woman who laments the fact that she must rely on financial support from her mother, and an executive who supervised hundreds of co-workers and was given 10 minutes to clear out his office (he now spends hours sending out résumés and networking at what are sometimes called “whine and dine” meetings). Nor is the small-scale entrepreneur spared—despite a solid business plan, the owners of a vibrant community coffee shop must close their doors, leaving them with dashed dreams and debts. While getting their hair cut and styled, the newly unemployed describe feelings of fear, loss, and sadness as they face a cutthroat market in which some jobs may never return, while euphemisms like “in transition” become part of their vocabularies, and concepts such as the “elevator speech” (summarizing career goals in the time it takes an elevator to descend to the ground floor) take on increased importance. The documentary also tartly captures today's angry mood directed at banks, bailouts, big business, and bonuses. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (S. Rees)