Why should you see BLUE COLLAR? Richard Pryor.

It was something of an accident of timing, but BLUE COLLAR pretty closely mirrors or forecasts the dire decline of the so-called (American) rust belt cities – the end of an industrial era, and all the living symbolism wrapped up in that. This noted, BLUE COLLAR romanticizes nothing – this is a ROUGH film – a brutal world of grueling work that gets you nothing, extreme recreation, and – most importantly – a world in which everyone breathing seems to be trying to rip someone off. Everyone gets screwed. The American dream, any semblance of a ‘normal’ work ethic and what that might get you, any sense of a life devoid of soul corruption as something to aspire to are omnipresent qualities here. It all comes down to who gets who first.

BLUE COLLAR is celebrated for a number of reasons – the casting is inspired, subverting a standard Hollywood racial casting formula, and director/writer Paul Schrader (his directorial debut; Schrader was already known for writing TAXI DRIVER) gets unforgettable performances from three leads who apparently didn’t much care for each other. Richard Pryor’s dramatic performance is oft-commented upon for a reason – his performance as Zeke is a tour-de-force; one of the great moments in recent (at least) American cinema; there are two Pryor scenes early on that will stay with you forever – Pryor injects a touch of gallows humor, but this is a drama (something Pryor only had the opportunity to do rarely), and Pryor makes you feel all the spontaneous rage of his character – a financially desperate nearly bankrupt man who has been worked as hard as you can work a man short of death or insanity. A dozen movies every year are blurbed as “unforgettable:” this one actually earns the term.

And it does so the old-fashioned way – Schrader builds drama very carefully, with methodical pacing, sharp and realistic dialogue (the profanity here is extremely prolific and very casually raw and macho), and a documentary-real glimpse of post-industrial decay as it creeps into everyone’s day-to-day existances: dirty and raw, filled with unsolveable moral conundrums and a simmering rage over expectations shattered. Partially due to Schrader’s influences (which included Bresson and Ozu), this is a visually quiet film, which only serves to rachet the tension in the story up to unbelievable levels: lots of long takes. When the camera moves, it’s not in any hurry to do so. Lots of straight cuts. And – while there is a soundtrack and a score – featuring Byron Berline, Captain Beefheart, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Ike & Tina, Schrader uses only real sound in the most dramatic moments, producing a piece of work that hits like a sledgehammer.

Schrader’s story – which at first might seem to be just another indictment of “the system,” or the moral degeneracy of the late-20th-century corporate world, or corrupt, collusive unions, each having their rough way with a working class that doesn’t seem to have much of anywhere else to go – manages instead to inch towards some darker ironies: that mythologized working class isn’t any more loyal, or moral, than the upper classes that are – in fact – brazenly shafting them silly – and as the film moves into it’s latter half, this nasty paradox, fleshed out with off-the-cuff gallows humor that Pryor (and also Keitel and Kotto) supplies turns BLUE COLLAR into a ruthless, and honest little masterpiece.