Reseñas de la crítica

McLeary and Aldous trust the process completely. It took several years for the filmmakers to obtain access to the high-security prison. . . . Yet their approach doesn’t seem encumbered by these circumstances; rather, it feels both immersive and in tune with the volatile nature of their subject.

Some might invoke voyeurism to describe the above, but doing so can say more about the viewer than it does of what and who is being viewed. For when we are privileged to watch, others have afforded us that privilege. . . . In fact, in a film like The Work, with its multiple layers of privileged access and precariously obtained permissions from an array of potentially volatile participants, you're not just being allowed to see. Your sight is essential. Seeing and being seen is the point.

Opening an aperture into a process so ego-stripping that it feels unseemly to witness, "The Work" is enlightening yet also punishing. Even more disturbing than one of the crimes described — and the near-constant background howls — is the convicts' willingness to bare their souls for the nosing-around camera.

The film dramatizes the violence of the American male psyche with a sense of physicality and passion that's rare in cinema, recalling the confessional intensity of Shirley Clarke's Portrait of Jason. . . . It's freeing and intoxicating to watch these tough guys cry, as they're validating the fragility of men who feel they're not living up to the American male ideal.

The constant therapy-speak may be squirm-inducing for more uptight British viewers, and risks confirming suspicions about the huggy-feely nature of Californians of all classes, but for the open-minded this is moving, even wrenching viewing that might inspire similar approaches in British institutions. The dry, strictly observational shooting style means the doc stays in the moment and rarely ventures out of the room where the programme unfolds, adding immediacy.

For the first 15 minutes there's an unease borne of earnestness that puts you on edge, partially with residual embarrassment at the tender confessions of the tattooed, beefed-up convicts . . . and partially with a sense that the whole enterprise could derail in a flash. By its end, you can hear a pin drop — it accelerates so rapidly in energy and severity and maintains its thudding heart rate with such relentlessness . . . that the film itself starts to feel cathartic.