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The Heart of What Drives Us
How uplifting is Knock Down the House?
You’ll come out of the theater wishing you had a propeller on your head so you could spin yourself into the stratosphere. That kind of uplifting.
My friend and I walked out of the IFC Center in the West Village animated and hopeful as we processed the 86 minutes we’d just witnessed. This documentary film, directed by Rachel Lears, is not just informative entertainment but a blueprint of sorts for how to translate yearning into action.
It gets to the heart of what drives us — love, anger, justice, corruption.
I recently mentioned to a colleague how unsettling I find it that I am so often buoyed by anthems, maybe to an extreme. Don’t rain on my parade. Seriously, step off my glee. Who run the world? Girls. The record company, Rosie, just gave me a big advance. Take that.
Why do I need all that ballyhoo to spring into action, I wondered.
But in Knock Down the House, I saw I’m not the only one who gets worked up and turns it into fuel. We meet four women who ran for Congress — Cori Bush, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Paula Jean Swearingen and Amy Vilela — and follow along on the paths they took to go from unknowns to getting on the ballot in their respective states. Their motivators: unrest in Ferguson, deadly residuals of coal mining…
