[ The Festival Fare pages of the Film Lounge each feature two or three movies currently or recently to be found on the world's film-festival circuit ]


Michael Glawogger's Working Man's Death [8/10]
        Strong meat indeed, Working Man's Death is as remarkable to experience at as it is stimulating - and disturbing - to ponder. Subtitled 5 Portraits of Work in the 21st Century, the film is divided into discrete sections showing a particular kind of manual labour in a particular part of the world. [1] Heroes : Donbass, Ukraine : coalmining. [2] Ghosts : Kawah Ijen, Indonesia : sulphur-hewing. [3] Lions : Port Harcourt, Nigeria : livestock-slaughter. [4] Brothers : Gaddani, Pakistan : shipbreaking. [5] Future : Liaoning, China : smelting. There is then an Epilogue filmed in Duisburg, Germany, at a former factory which has become an educational 'park' to teach children about heavy industry.
        Clearly a time-consuming, expensive project, Working Man's Death is striking in several behind-the-scenes departments: John Zorn's pulsating music; Wolfgang Thaler's cinematography; the editing by Ilse Buchelt and Monika Willi. And these contributions are skilfully marshalled by Glawogger into a very slick, impressive, compelling package. But whether or not such gruelling endeavours should be presented in such an overwhelmingly aesthetic fashion is another matter, and the absence of narration and explanatory title-cards gives the proceedings a distanced, analytical air which certainly won't please all viewers.
        Glawogger's previous documentary Megacities was heavily criticised in many quarters for what was perceived to be (a) ostentatious bleakness, (b) reliance on semi-staged events, and (c) the exploitation of its subjects. Working Man's Death isn't without moments where you do find yourself wondering about the film-makers' intentions: the Lions sequence, for example, features repetitive, extended footage of gory animal slaughter which will be unbearably distressing for some.
        But it's pretty clear that (this time) nothing is being staged solely for the camera's benefit: Working Man's Death is a record of everyday events which are beyond the experience or even the imagination of the vast majority of viewers. And it contains a range of material which is easily powerful enough to stand on its own merits without editorial comment: as adults, we can surely draw our own conclusions without being pointed this way or that. 
        Glawogger's approach may frustrate (or even appall) some, but the director - who has evidently been to all of these places and seen these people's lives close up - doesn't seem to have any agenda of his own. His camera discovers, observes and records, and he finds beauty and grace, as well as horror and economic oppression. What's perhaps most uncomfortable for us is that these seemingly polar-opposite elements should so often come together, in the same place, and at the same time.

ORDER WORKING MAN'S DEATH HERE

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Andrew Bujalski's Mutual Appreciation [6/10]
        Writer-director-editor Bujalski's follow-up to Funny Ha Ha (2003) is a noodling, amiable little black-and-white comedy about cash-strapped, slightly directionless twentysomethings in Manhattan - although it could have been filmed anywhere, as we see very few external shots and there's nothing especially 'Manhattanish' about the interiors. The central character is Alan (Justin Rice), a mildly dysfunctional singer-songwriter-performer who arrives in New York from Boston following the break-up of his band, a jangly-guitar indie outfit (called, all too plausibly, The Bumblebees.) In between trying to advance his musical career, he semi-reluctantly enjoys the romantic attentions of radio-DJ Sara (Seung-Min Lee), and generally hangs out with his friend Lawrence (Bujalski) and Lawrence's girlfriend Ellie (Rachel Clift). 
        Making little bones about its debt to Cassavetes, Jarmusch, Woody Allen and co, the picture has a likeably loose, improvised feel - although, as is often the case with this kind of film-making, quite a few of the scenes drag on rather too long. And the US indie-cinema scene has never had any shortage of these casually hip rambles through artsy bohemia - though Bujalski's effort is emphatically preferable to painfully pretentious recent efforts such as Azazel Jacobs' (justifiably little-seen) Nobody Needs To Know. On the other hand, there's not much here to make Mutual Appreciation stand out from the indie pack. The main problem is the fact that Alan comes across as a self-centred, obnoxious jerk - and since he's seldom off screen for long, this makes for a somewhat taxing view (British audiences, meanwhile, may be distracted by the fact that facially he resembles a toothy cross between Nicolas Cage, Margaret Beckett and a very young Jack Straw.)

        The script's focus is principally on Alan and Lawrence, with Ellie and Sara largely sidelined - unfortunate, as Clift and Lee both manage to turn in engaging, nuanced characterisations. In terms of screen-time, however, they fare much better than the actor who makes the biggest impression: Pamela Corkey as Patricia, into whose late-night party a drunken Alan fuzzily wanders. Corkey works real wonders with what is little more than a cameo role: the picture briefly comes to life when she pops up, only to resume its pleasant, forgettable course immediately after. She clearly deserves a rather larger canvas that the tiny corner she's allotted in this miniature.




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Tomislav Radic's What Iva Recorded on 21st October 2003 [6/10]
        Abigail's Party gets the 'Dogme' treatment - by way of Henry James's What Maisie Knew - in this blackly comic tale of family dysfunction in modern-day Zagreb. As the title suggests, the film is supposedly 'found footage' shot by malcontent teenager Iva (Masha Mati Prodan) using the (surprisingly bulky) video camera she's been given for her 15th birthday. The camera has been purchased by her stepfather, businessman Bozo (Ivo Gregurevic), who has the unwise idea of using Iva's birthday 'party' (actually a semi-formal dinner) to entertain an important German associate, Herr Hoffman (Karl Menrad).
        Things don't go well - although, given the disastrous-family-gathering genre (see Denmark's peerless Festen or Poland's raucously stygian The Wedding), viewers may be slightly disappointed that events don't really spiral into as much chaos as we might expect, and the climax is a bit of a fizzle. In addition, the 'as-filmed-by-Iva' approach feels gimmicky - the lass shows remarkable camera and editing skills, including an eerie knack for keeping the image in focus and the sound fully audible, all of which strains the necessary suspension of disbelief.
        That said, Radic and his co-scriptwriter Ognjen Svilcic do maintain a nice running gag in which Iva is repeatedly told to desist from using her new toy ("Stop filming me!" ... "Switch it off!"), injunctions which she briefly obeys then breezily ignores. And there's a large amount of enjoyable schadenfreude to be had watching the various family tensions and discontents erupt through their facade of consumerist bourgeois contentment - "Life among the clones" as Iva's rebellious artist uncle Darko (Boris Svrtan) puts it - from the overlooked Iva's jaundiced perspective.
        65-year-old Radic may seem an unlikely candidate to get into the head of a wilful teenage girl - credit for this presumably lies with 34-year-old Svilcic, who last year mined rather similar terrain with his own Sorry About the Kung Fu. Crucially, the performances in What Iva Recorded... are strong across the board - multilingually so in most cases, with English being used as a somewhat stilted lingua franca around the dining table: Anja Sovagovic-Despot makes the most of the picture's meatiest role as Iva's alcohol-swigging, volatile mother, while Barbara Prpic visibly enjoys herself as 'model/escort' Nina.

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Neil Young
16th/17th December, 2005


WORKING MAN'S DEATH : [8/10] : aka Workingman's Death : Austria (Aus/Ger) 2005 : Michael GLAWOGGER : 122 mins (timed) : recent festivals include London, Vienna and Toronto.

MUTUAL APPRECIATION : [6/10] : USA 2005 : Andrew BUJALSKI : 108 mins (timed) : Tribeca, Boston Independent, Newport.

WHAT IVA RECORDED ON 21ST OCTOBER 2003 : [6/10] : Sto je Iva snimila 21. listopada 2003. : Croatia 2005 : Tomislav RADIC : 92 mins (timed) : Ljubljana, Dubrovnik, Pula.

All seen at home in Sunderland (UK), December 2005:
Working Man's Death on DVD, 15th (with thanks to Anne Laurent)
Mutual Appreciation on VHS, 14th/15th (with thanks to Andrew Bujalski)
What Iva Recorded... on DVD, 15th (with thanks to Vladimir Spicer)