For many of the people on a film crew the film being shot is just a job. It doesn’t apply only to office workers or civil servants.
I think you’re making an interesting observation here, Jirin. This came to mind as I was watching Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, in which the rebel protagonist ends up on a path to marraige and a stable working class job – and this is viewed as some kind of defeat of his individuality. It reminded me of Il Posto in that way.
Now, the truth is I do think these are all fine films (Office Space too), but its funny how some artists view normal everyday life with a degree a suspicion.
i haven’t seen il posto yet but it sounds like bukowski’s post office lol. also i think olmi was/is a communist? anyway i’ve only seen tree of wooden clogs
and hell, i view normal everyday life with a degree of suspicion…boring routine grinds u down, tiny cog in a big machine and all that…i think artists only take normal jobs so as not to starve lol
Rarely have I seen a film misinterpreted so thoroughly and completely that it is extended to include the director’s life !
Olmi was a working stiff ! the film was an act of love !
Todd Solondz teaches english to russian immigrants to raise money for his films.
But Jirin does acknowledge the possibility that Olmi worked and hated it. I think he’s more about whether filmmakers can portray the workspace more sympathetically. In Olmi’s case, given his political sensibilities, he’s showing that kind of work as the form of alienation that he experienced. And I’m not sure how his representation is that different in that sense than something like Office Space (Dilbert’s crap so I won’t go into that).
Generally, if someone is happy working an office job and that kind of bureaucratic routine, they won’t go into filmmaking. Anyway, I worked a 40-hour per week office job or a year when I was fresh out of my undergrad and couldn’t stand it either. It wasn’t soul sucking but it was bad enough. And, thankfully, I haven’t worked one since. I prefer my time to be my own rather than to belong (in rented form) to someone else.
I hope so Ruby, it is one of the most beautiful work-related films ever made.
If I owned an accounting firm, I would make new employees watch it – they wouldn’t get it – which is why I would never own an accounting firm.
That’s interesting. In that case, I’d say Olmi is misgeneralizing government work to all work. ;)
It also makes the implication that the job is a job for life seem more preposterous. Olmi got out, did he not? He applied common sense: He couldn’t stand his job so he got a better one.
Ari – I think Olmi liked working at Edisonvolta.
I don’t think there is an alienation message in the film – it is as it is: documentary of a passage.
Jirin – weren’t there docs & interviews on the disc?
He learned his craft at Edisonvolta – he was well liked there and I think he liked the security.
“I don’t think there is an alienation message in the film”
If Il Posto isn’t about alienated labour, I don’t know what is….
Jirin, jobs for life were quite common in Europe up to recently. Most people would work their entire lives for the same company. How soul sucking that was is up for debate especially now that in the new Europe jobs for life are vanishing.
@RWP
If he liked it there, then why is the film so dark and hopeless? That seems to me like a contradiction if it’s autobiographical.
Jirin, jobs for life in the old Europe—esp Southern Europe- were ways to avoid low paying work or unemployment. People hung on to them because the alternative was much worse. Many of us were raised in countries with more flexible employment, so we can not relate to what is being depicted here for the most part. But they didn’t necessarily like them, and there wasn’t much in the way of upward mobility, unless you were crooked.
Southern Europe is still like that, although things are changing.
Okay, I can understand that. But here’s the contradiction. RWP’s saying it’s autobiographical, and that he liked his job. But if that’s the case, shouldn’t the film be more balanced? Does he hate his previous job that much, or is it not as autobiographical as the article says?
Bergman doesn’t
This is a great idea for a thread, Jirin, as I’ve often wondered similar thoughts myself.
I’m always impressed when an A-list Hollywood director (or top “in demand” filmmaker from anywhere in the world, for that matter) can portray, with great accuracy, working class life (Martin Scorsese is one who does this very well—Taxi Driver and After Hours spring to mind). Then I quickly remember that these people probably started out working class themselves. It’s more a problem with actors and actresses who were raised comfortably middle class, never had to work a job that got their hands dirty, then moved straight from the catwalk into acting (or to put it more accurately, starring in films). Then there may be a lack of authenticity.
Paul Schrader seems to understand working class life as well as anybody in Blue Collar. Charles Chaplin not only understood the working class, he understood poverty (he grew up in it) and the dehumanising impact of the Industrial Revolution (hence Modern Times).
I’d encourage young apsiring filmmakers to work some sort of job (as opposed to waiting on art grants that will probably never come, or daddy’s money) either during or after their studies. As Jirin said, there is a certain self-sufficiency in working and raising your own money. At the same time, a lot of work out there is a crock, and I do believe that the culture of work needs to change, but if nobody went to “regular work” anymore, there would still be a need for some kind of work and self-sufficiency. We can’t all be university lecturers. There is a need for people at least some of the time to get their hands dirty, something that I think is lost on slightly more “privileged” classes.
What about Visconti and La Terra Trema?
He presented a brilliant portrayal of the backbreaking daily struggle of Sicilian fishermen, but I doubt he had ever done a single day of labor in his life.
@WANDERER- “There is a need for people at least some of the time to get their hands dirty, something that I think is lost on slightly more “privileged” classes.”
Ideally, yes, but those kind of jobs are reserved for immigrants. And no, I’m not being ridiculous.
The directors you mentioned above are from a different generation.
Wait, nevermind. La Terra Trema is probably not a good example.
Nightshift, I don’t think you and I live in the same world, and I find your comment incredibly offensive.
So you are saying that blue collar jobs are reserved for immigrants? Really, since when? There are millions of people of non-migrant status working blue collar jobs in my country, and on the other side of the coin, many people from overseas occupying the middle-class (or what’s left of it). I’ve always worked in factories and warehouses and so do many other Australians.
Blue collar jobs have always had room for natives if you will, they have never been largely or exclusively for people off the boat. I honestly don’t understand how/why you think that all our factories, warehouses, docks, mines are just full up of people from other lands. In fact, if you look inside a lot of such places, quite the opposite. Have you ever WORKED in a blue collar environment, Night Shift?
If he liked it there, then why is the film so dark and hopeless?
Why is love dark and hopeless? The change to be made out of one’s self preoccupation?
It is coming-of-age film – is it is dark and hopeless? He learns the order, meets with success and makes a transition.
If I remember, the film was reviled by the right and the left for being right or left. The Catholics and the Communists didn’t get it either.
Yes, it ends hopefully:
But his silent, thoughtful size-ups run throughout the film and imbue it with a sense of quiet uplift. In the end, as Domenico is filling a position created by the recent demise of an accountant, he is delivered into a potentially Kafkaesque future, but one has the sense that his questing temperament will eventually (perhaps ten years later?) lead him in another direction.
Is the movie so dark and hopeless anyway? I didn’t find it so. Definitely several tones lighter than dark without being cheery, it fits in more with films termed bittersweet than dark I’d think.
Well Greg, I’d bet you’ve probably held a job.
The film is a page out of my life. The first accounting firm I worked for was a maze of meaningless procedures – so I first thought. But I learned – I kept my head down and worked hard: at all times attentive to whatever is going on around him, stealing glances at everyone and everything, privately sizing up this strange world of work into which he has stepped. At the second accounting firm I was the only one of my cohorts the firm saw as having partnership potential.
Richard Avedon concluded that work is the only meaningful constant in life.
Indeed.
Heh. Yeah, it reminded me a lot of an office job I had once, including the would be romance, which consumed much more of my attention than any of the “work” I was assigned to do.
Work is good for the soul apparently, but only in moderation ;-)
@ Greg
Yes, I think the film makes a statement about the proximity to people – the relationships vs the actual work:
… work is the only meaningful constant in life.
Double indeed. Work generates life.
Robert, yes, and that also speaks a little to what I was suggesting in the other thread about directors. Sometimes those sorts of details are what separates one director from another in terms of “style”, but it isn’t accounted for quite as readily.
Yeah, details get lost in broad categorizations. Nonetheless, categories are a starting point, not an end-all to perception.
Jirin
Do you ever get the impression that since film directors get to spend their lives doing exactly the thing that they love, it makes them see anything else as some soul crushing automatic process akin to slavery?
The most direct example I can think of is Il Posto, which was shown in the last Director’s Cup. In the film, a boy is sucked into a government job and his father immediately tells him “Why do you need books anymore?” All his personal effects are immediately taken away from him, and all his coworkers’ ultimate goal in life is to advance to the front desk. The message: All his freedom is gone, everything unique about him is gone, sucked into an emotionless, lifeless system.
This leads me to believe either Olmi never had that sort of job, or he had one once and hated it, because the personality of an artistic person clashes with that kind of job. (Or maybe he just worked for the wrong company.)
The ideal situation is, of course, if you can make money doing the thing you love. But if what you love doesn’t make money, taking a job you can tolerate does not reduce your freedom, it increases it. Self sufficience is a form of freedom, and the people who don’t work and sit around at home all day, they are the ones with no freedom, because they are completely dependent on other people to feed themselves.
There is a small minority of people who love office work so much that they make it their identity and stake their pride on it. The rest of us are just perfectly willing to be bored for 40 hours a week if it means we can do as we please for the rest of the time. I think directors like Olmi simply can’t understand defining themselves by anything other than what they do at work.
Current pop culture images of the 9-5 workplace are no more flattering: Dilbert, Office Space. But then again, that’s the point of Office Space: If you hate your job that much find one you can tolerate. Pop icons like these are made to help people blow off steam from their stress at work, but they have the side effect of making people who haven’t worked see them as reality. These pop images differ from the images of the workplace you see in art films in a key way: They were produced by people who actually worked in office jobs, and they’re making fun of it to have fun, and all those ten years olds who follow Dilbert in the funny pages are missing the point.
Art film directors who genuinely see it as this evil automaton of authority are just, well, wrong.