Poor Tax: A Satire for the Whole Family

As a satire on wealthy white Americans, Alec Bewkes and Oliver Salk’s Poor Tax is a close reproduction of reality, as is often the case. Funny and frustrating, it features an ensemble cast as a family ripping at the seams for a friendly game of Monopoly on Thanksgiving.

The father (Circus Szalewski) is, in fact, at the root of the problem. The mother (Laura Faye Smith) is superfluous. The sons (Bewkes and Jesse Howland) are two sides of the same coin, minted in the image of the father (as much as they might hate it). The daughter (Madison Dietrich), unable to reconcile her privilege with her convictions, can only take on the burden of cognitive dissonance in half measures. 

Welfare schemes, black activism, mental disability, and practically every other subject on the American pop political radar is thrown up in a game of bingo for Scott, the father, to mock and the sons to languidly commentate. Julia fights the good fight, confused but spirited, and of course, alone and losing. Liberally peppered in are each character’s personal failings minus Jean, who really just wants to watch Downton Abbey with a nice glass of wine.

It is easy to imagine years of history behind dialogue exchanges across the entire cast. To have a sizable chunk of contemporary political discourse served up as it is here, the relative lightness of the family’s petty squabbles becomes essential to make the whole thing go down easy. The pacing is brisk, building up to a boil that threatens the very fabric of the family (and briefly, Scott’s entire belief system).

Poor Tax is spot on in its characterisation. The comedy is tempered just right, dipping into contempt, anger, shock, even sex, and withdrawing before it derails the narrative. The focus remains steady on politically mixed families in America today. Nearly no one looks good.

Watch Poor Tax Short Film Trailer