Workingman’s Death (2005)
Michael Glawogger
Pashtu/Yoruba/German/English/Ibo/Indonesian/Mandarin/Russian
“We imitate the figures and pose like the soldiers and our ancestors up there. We think these poses look really funny and avant-garde.”
Michael Glawogger’s Workingman’s Death (2005) is the kind of film that helps illustrate why an authorial viewpoint is so important in documentary filmmaking. More than anything, Glawogger’s film suffers from the absence of a voiceover. This occasional pseudo-neutrality and non-involvement of the filmmaker is troubling precisely because it runs the risk of alienating the subject from the filmmaker. When you set out to make a documentary on the lives of the oppressed and unprivileged, there are only two ways you can take. One, you film their situation from at a considerable distance, clinically analyzing the causes of their misery and, preferably, pointing out a way out of it. Or two, you go up, close and personal, empathize with them, understand them and document their condition as you would your own, always being critical of what they are going through. Merely gawking at their wretchedness, in the name of neutral observation, amounts to nothing more than crowding near a man run over by a car. Filmmakers such as Pedro Costa have tried to resolve the deadlock between the imperative to avoid exploitation of one’s subjects and the need to document their living condition by, as Michael Sicinski sharply notes, making them active participants in the creative process, by fictionalizing the documentary with the consent of its participants. What this effectively does is that it gives a voice to the subjects, as if they are expressing themselves through the film incidentally organized by the director. Additionally, other filmmakers like Werner Herzog (who has done some atrocious things as well) continually (and, some might say, overbearingly) intrude on their subject’s space – interrupting them, commenting upon them and essentially reducing what they’ve shot to the level of found footage – and hence display a deep personal commitment towards the topic at hand.
What is interesting about Workingman’s Death is that it assumes all the above attitudes in turn. There are phases in the film that are simply brilliant, some interesting, some insipid and some plainly worthy of contempt. There is nothing you learn from the film that’s not summed up in its title. What one expects from it, then, is to study the politico-historical reasons for the eponymous demise of the worker and what it means to the proletariat today. And the film starts on the right note. As the title credits play, we are shown a collage of news reels and archival footage, all depicting workers doing various strenuous activities, cut at a rapid pace reminiscent of the early Soviet films. Likewise, the soundtrack is a patchwork of drilling noise and ominous percussion-heavy music. This prelude ends with a clip depicting a pair of bubbling Soviet workers pledging that they will mine an amount of coal that is much more than is expected from them in a single year. They are filmed with the camera pointing upwards towards them. Following this, Glawogger cuts to the present, to the image of a tired worker, whose face is covered with coal dust, posing for the camera. An on-screen quote from Faulkner reads: “You can’t eat eight hours a day nor drink for eight hours a day nor make love for eight hours — all you can do for eight hours is work. Which is the reason why man makes himself and everybody else so miserable and unhappy”. The contrast that the subsequent image – a wintry, deserted townscape – provides to the preceding montage is jarring and drives home the point right away. That the town is in Ukraine – an erstwhile member of the Soviet Union – only reinforces the central idea, which is the failure of the Utopian socialist dream of the omnipotent worker.
‘Heroes’, this ironically titled and finely directed first part of the film, is set in Donbass, Ukraine, a former mining hub of Soviet Russia, and follows the working routine of a bunch of freelance miners who gather the last pieces of coal left in the mountains. We are told that the government-run mining industry has been shut down and these workers have been left with no choice other than to form small groups, dig out whatever coal they can, sell them and share the profits. Glawogger intercuts these snippets of interviews with a piece of propaganda that details Andrey Stakhanov’s record-breaking stint at the same mine in 1935 when his team collected 102 tons in a single shift, virtually triggering off the Stakhanovite movement. The image of charged workers carrying their drills over their shoulders like rifles and marching forward, heaving their chests and singing under the open sky stands in stark opposition to these handful of miners crawling in a mineshaft that is hardy a couple of feet high and which could collapse on the slightest of errors. We realize how the image of the worker as envisioned (and perhaps constructed) by the Stalinists became more of a self-deceiving prison than a liberating guide for the common worker (an idea that was superbly explored in Makavejev’s Man Is Not A Bird (1965)). Glawogger enters the mine along with the workers, crawling about just like them, to document them (It is an achievement that the movie is shot in film and not in video, which would have been logistically easier). It’s a Herzogian moment no doubt, but to bring in an auteurist dimension would be to undermine the vision of the film, which is nearly what Glawogger himself ends up doing later in the film.
We are also shown the women in the area, who, too, make money by mining and whose camaraderie reflects the men’s. They are more cynical about education and believe that they would have ended up at the same position even if they had gone to college. They laugh at the idea that a faith in God might save them. Perhaps this gender equality is all that remains of the socialist dream. The workers are no more the all-powerful beings in control of the machinery they operate and the nature they exploit. They are now gleaners squeezing every ounce of coal they can out the nearly exhausted mines. The 102 tons of coal that Stakhanov mined in a single shift has become the stuff of legends, much like Stakhanov himself. They are less like Stakhanov and more like Sisyphus – mining to live and living to mine – with seemingly no way out of this wearing circle. Much like the mythological hero, these people seem to have come to terms with their condition. Glawogger, too, ends the section on a note that isn’t much different from how Camus concludes his essay: “…one must imagine Sisyphus happy”. For the first time in the film, we see something that’s really cheerful – a wedding. The couple and their friends celebrate near the Stakhanov statue at the centre of the town. They have bonfires. They leave. Lest it should become a gesture of complacence, Glawogger signs off with the image of the Stakhanov statue standing alone in the wintry night, with the bride’s headwear hanging from his left arm – the answer to a question that will be asked at the end of the film.
‘Ghosts’ is shot in Kawahljen, Indonesia, where we see a group of workers chip away large chunks of Sulphur from a valley and carry them all the way to a factory where they get paid. Although the section stands in contrast to the claustrophobic undergrounds of the previous segment, it is equally suffocating to see these workers gagging themselves to avoid getting poisoned while mining these pieces of Sulphur. Glawogger directs the segment with traces of fiction, including what appear like rehearsed conversations and with dynamic camera movements which are simply too beautiful for their own good. There is even a thread consisting of what seems like a gay couple, which is clearly ridiculed by the other workers, that throws light upon the hierarchies of marginalization. We are also shown tourists who visit this breathtaking valley and have themselves photographed along with these workers or temporarily assuming their roles. These tourists humour the workers, treating them condescendingly. One of the workers even talks about a French woman who wanted to kiss him. Evidently, Glawogger is criticizing these middle-class folks for their hypocrisy and for glamorizing what is essentially a life of ordeals. The irony here is that Glawogger does the same thing later in the film. However, there is one sequence which shows one worker selling a improvised Sulphur curio to the tourists at exorbitant prices. For a moment the film attains remarkable density where, for once, the basic human elements of the film are not overshadowed by class-level analysis. However, the political context in this segment is weaker as compared to the previous segment. For one, there is no reason why the film must be set in Indonesia. The only reason for this deadly routine of these workers that we can think of is globalization. But unlike in ‘Heroes’, that connection is not stressed upon one bit (apart from the fact that one worker is wearing a football jersey!).
But it is in the third and fourth segments that the film really plummets. The middle section, ‘Lions’, takes place in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and inside a slaughter-ground where hundreds of cattle are sacrificed, skinned and processed every day. Glawogger shows us all the killings in fine detail, without any restraint, spending considerable time chronicling the process of slaying, skinning and roasting the animals and lesser time talking to the people who do that. Of course, the reference point here is Franju’s Blood of the Beasts (1949, from which shots are borrowed by Glawogger for the title sequence), where the director took us through a graphic tour of Parisian slaughterhouses, revealing the opaqueness of our morality, among other things. But the subtle difference between the stylistics of Glawogger and of Franju reveals a world’s difference between the attitudes of both the filmmakers towards the killings. While Franju assembled the clips and provided a voice over that built on the material, Glawogger seems to treat the footage of the slaughter as an end in itself. As a result, Franju’s film became an analysis that based itself on the everyday work at the abattoirs whereas Glawogger’s film seems as if it merely wants to record workplace details (and possibly pass itself off as a “mature” film). The shots of animals being slit become the only destination for Glawogger here since his relationship between the people who carry out this task remains tenuous, at best, in this segment. The workers at the slaughter grounds mark the severed heads of the cattle they’ve slain so that they can reclaim them later. They ward off each other so that their share is not taken away. As indicated by the title of the segment and by its visual scheme where the workers appear nearly buried beneath the chunks of meat, Glawogger is actually comparing them with a pack of lions fiercely holding on to what they’ve hunted – quite a reproachable comparison I’d say.
The fourth part of the film, titled ‘Brothers’, sees the film shift base from Africa back to Asia, this time to a shipyard in Gaddani, Pakistan. We witness workers dismantling large ships, piece by piece, where one false move could result in death (In fact, all the workers shown in the film stand on the verge of death. They risk their lives in order to survive). The group consists of a large number of native and immigrant workers – perhaps from Afghanistan – who help and motivate each other at the workplace. They pine for their beloveds, whom they get to see only during the year ends. We also get to see one photographer who visits the shipyard, offering people a chance to get photographed with a rifle for ten rupees. Are we supposed to pity these workers that they are misguidedly revering terrorists? Or are we supposed to see how deep the Islamic resistance to westernization goes? Glawogger doesn’t answer, and perhaps rightly so. The problem in this section, however, lies in its aesthetics. Glawogger shoots the dismantling work from various angles and distances, creating a symphony of destruction. He uses ultra slow motion and lets us see every speck of dust that rises as the pieces fall. The sense of awe near completely undoes the drudgery that we are witnessing. That Workingman’s Death is shot in film makes it all the more beautiful and hence very objectionable. But that is not the biggest flaw of this segment.
There is no apparent reason why both ‘Lions’ and ‘Brothers’ should be shot where they have been. The slogging that we witness at both the shipyard and the slaughter house is neither geopolitically specific nor a result of global politics. As Michael Atkinson says, there is no reason to believe that it the condition of these workers would have been much better during some other century (the film is subtitled “5 Portraits of Work in the 21st Century”) or if they were in some other country with similar political climate (one worker in Nigeria says that they would be better off if their country allowed them to export meat – a statement that called for further examination, even if it seems shortsighted). Perhaps Glawogger’s exploration is metaphysical rather than political, but the fact that he sets the film entirely in socialist or third world countries throws that argument into question (I guess it would have done the film some good had there been a segment chronicling workers living in developed countries). Moreover, three of the five segments document certain religious practices of the workers, two of which involve animal sacrifice. In all the three segments, the workers have a deep faith in God, deterministically accepting what God has preordained for them. The suffering is taken as a given and some of them are even proud of what they do. Perhaps they find solace and meaning in religion. That all the three countries are Islamic is somewhat troubling (the film was made in 2005 – a time when the demonizing of Muslims was at its peak), especially given that Glawogger could have chosen any three countries for his purpose since there is nothing very specific about Nigeria, Pakistan or Indonesia that he underscores.
However, the film comes right back on track (or should I say, west of the track?!) in the final segment – the shortest and the best – of the film, “Future”, set in Liaoning, an industrial town in northeastern China. The segment opens with a bunch of men writing text on a platform at the town centre, moving backwards (Mandarin is written vertically), with what looks like volatile ink. The soundtrack plays the voice of chairman Mao extolling industrial workers. The point is clearly made: everything that we see and hear is transitory and is a relic of the past. This phenomenon of getting trapped in failed visions and unfulfilled promises of the past is what forms the central theme of ‘Future’ (in contrast to the disillusionment of ‘Heroes’). The focus soon shifts to the workers in the smelting factories of the township. The workers who are interviewed seem to have deep faith in their country and what it is doing for (and to) them. They acknowledge that times have changed, but retain that by equipping the factories with newer technologies, the nation could be back on the path of progress. These interview snippets are followed by a short conversation with a couple of youngsters standing near a people’s monument, located in the town, depicting workers enthusiastically toiling around a giant statue of Mao. The youngsters tell us that they like coming to this place and getting themselves photographed while assuming the poses of their ancestors. Of course, this attitude seems indicative of the workers as well, who insist on repeating rhetoric of the past even when the nation has moved into a market economy like the west.
There is also an epilog to the film, set in Duisburg-Nord Country Park, Germany – once the Duisburg-Meiderich Steelworks. The factory is evidently in a deplorable condition. We sense that only the phantom of the smelting plant remains. Kids have infested the rusted factory premises, hurling water balloons at each other. As night falls, we see teenagers making out. A narrator gives us the history of the smelting factory and what became of it later: “Then came the last shift. But not the end; rather a new beginning. The smelting plant was transformed into a unique leisure park. When night falls in Duisburg, the blast furnaces flare up. In neon green and fantastic colors. ARTificial light in the truest sense.” We realize that the factory was closed down, but we wonder what happened to the workers. Glawogger, meanwhile, seems to be wondering what happened to “the worker”. May be that’s what he was trying to ask – however objectionably, however inconsistently – throughout the film. As the attractions at the park wind down, as the teenagers and kids move out, as the neon lights fade to black, the manager at the theme park asks a question (which also happens to be the final line in the film), in the public announcement system, whose answer was already given by the image of the solitary statue of Andrey Stakhanov standing in the snow in the first segment: “Have we left anyone sitting in the dark?”
August 3, 2010 at 1:36 am
Thanks for this insightful post. I’ve been thinking about WORKINGMAN’S DEATH the past couple of weeks. I tried to write something about it myself, and you’ve helped me finally realize that I was unable to do so because Glawogger’s film is politically muddled. It’s almost impossible to figure out exactly what he’s trying to express about work itself, unless the film is solely supposed to be a modern day hymn to the worker. I think this is why I viewed the film as a metaphysical exploration only; I fell in love with the images and didn’t want to admit that Glawogger’s ideas don’t fall into place. Basically, I’ve come to the conclusion that WORKINGMAN’S DEATH is a visceral masterpiece, but flawed as a film (if that makes any sense).
Concerning religion, the film only poses questions and doesn’t judge any religion in particular. The main question it asks is one that can be applied to any believer, namely: is religion a beautiful means in which to get through the day (looking towards a higher purpose), or is it something harmful that allows people to more easily accept their condition instead of urging them to change it. I don’t see Glawogger condemning anyone in the film for this. The same goes for the tourists in Indonesia. Glawogger simply records the meeting at the intersection. If the tourists are being criticized it’s only because we (the viewers) criticize them in light of our knowledge. In other words, we’ve seen what they have not seen. Because of the journey we’ve been on with the workers, we recognize that the tourists might be ignorant, yes, but we shouldn’t condemn them for this reason but understand them. It’s an unfortunate situation, perhaps, but I understood where they were coming from. Also, the workers exploit the tourists as well, taking advantage of their fascination for some quick, easy money. It all seems more like two sides of a coin (but of course the actual situation is more complex than that).
“…there is no reason to believe that it the condition of these workers would have been much better during some other century (the film is subtitled “5 Portraits of Work in the 21st Century”)”
I think that’s sort of the point. This kind of labor still goes on all over the world, yet it often remains hidden, especially in a world filled with increasingly more technology. This view changes the title of the film to mean “death” of the worker in terms of the world respecting and noticing him, not as a literal title of a film that exists to document highly dangerous labor. But if the film is seen as being something more than a visceral exploration of work (which also aims to record new images), then Glawogger’s Epilogue is a mis-step because it seems to suggest that technology is what will transform the world and free the worker from hard, menial labor.
As for setting some of the film in a more developed country, Glawogger originally intended for one of the segments to take place in Austria’s VOEST steelworks, but was denied permission because they wanted to get rid of their heavy labor image. Glawogger says he choose Pakistan because he “wanted to have a segment that deals with the relationship between the so-called First and Third World, Us and Them. We send our trash, in this case, our ships, to be wrecked in a place that lacks certain resources, in this case, iron ore, and can make use of our waste as raw material.” As for Indonesia, it seems that it was just an incredibly beautiful landscape where the workers journey can be seen as a kind of continuous epic, and, as toilsome as it is, Glawogger turns this into (or shows this as) a beautiful process. And not just aesthetically. When I contrast this segment with some of the repetitious labor found under the harsh florescent lights in OUR DAILY BREAD, I’m not so sure which situation seems less appealing. Now, is this because of Glawogger’s beautiful, sweeping camera combined with the colorful, mysterious landscape, or is it because we, as humans, can better relate to being outside doing physical work than we can with being inside performing the same task over and over with no real sense of accomplishment?
My overall impression of the film seems to be slightly different than many people’s. I was left feeling rejuvenated by our species’ ability to not just endure, but to find joy. To live.
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August 3, 2010 at 2:02 pm
Hectocotylus,
You make so many terrific points there, I don’t know where to begin.
Let me admit first that I was struggling with this review for the past few days as well. I think this is because Glawogger’s film is very ambiguous, but not in a very constructive way. It is highly likely that each person watching the film will come out with his/her own idea of the film, which is not necessarily a great thing here. I say this because I’m sure one of the most common responses to the film would be: “they’re poor, they’re struggling but they’re ultimately happy”. This complacence is fatal for a film that ought to open up its world and question us instead of avoiding any threat to our perception. As you say, the film could well be read as an indictment and as a paean to the work they are doing – an ambiguity that should ethically not be imposed on the decidedly poor condition they’re living in.
I think I’ll warm up gradually to the film’s treatment of those tourists and of religion because there’s nothing wrong in Glawogger not providing a concrete answer in those cases (It is more likely that Glawogger was presenting religion as an inconsequential entity rather than an ambiguous one).
And a splendid point there about technology. But I feel this kind of hard work would have been even less noticed in the centuries before this one (except in, of course, the Soviet and China, where workers were worshiped, at least on paper), probably because hard work was more or less the norm everywhere. In retrospect, I think Glawogger’s film should have done precisely that – exploring why technology hasn’t improved the situation for these workers.
…it was just an incredibly beautiful landscape where the workers journey can be seen as a kind of continuous epic, and, as toilsome as it is, Glawogger turns this into (or shows this as) a beautiful process. – I think this is a very big pitfall that the film falls into (especially in the 4th segment). I used to applaud this kind of a transformation, but the more I reflect on the ethics of filmmaking, the more I find this objectionable. This beautification of the horrible is a very dangerous thing (Think of how Spielberg got slammed for his recreation of Auschwitz). It guess, among other undesirable effects, it undermines our conviction that the situation should improve – a huge price to pay for creating art I’d say. “The difference between what is beautiful and what is just” said Serge Daney. I find myself increasingly agreeing with him.
” I was left feeling rejuvenated by our species’ ability to not just endure, but to find joy. To live.” – a very valid response and one that I respect. I think some parts of the film would unanimously elicit that reaction too. But I also believe that the film wants to engage in the politics behind the menial work, to analyze it and to criticize it. Either case, I find it necessary to reject one half of the film if I embrace the other.
The very difference in our two responses to the film, which has one foot planted in world politics and other in philosophy, sort of shows that the film is less ambiguous and more vague. I’d surely recommend the film though. It’ll be interesting to see what other responses one can find.
Thanks for the excellent comment!
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August 6, 2010 at 10:03 pm
Thanks for responding. You’ve made me want to watch the film again. I agree with you that it’s probably more vague (or muddled) than ambiguous.
I’m not sure yet where I stand regarding “the difference between what is beautiful and what is just” (where can I read more about this?), so I wanted to go into a little more detail regarding my current thoughts (many of which are just unanswered questions to myself) and see what you might have to say (only if you feel like it, of course). I apologize in advance if I contradict myself, or if some of my analogies are poor. As I said, I’m still thinking.
I was wondering if you think Glawogger could have shot the segment in Indonesia without it being beautiful (and therefore without it showing the journey of the workers as an aesthetically beautiful process)? The landscape itself is inherently beautiful, and perhaps there is also something inherently beautiful in labor, however toilsome. (It’s not as if the workers lives are shown as being enviable in the least.) Personally I’m skeptical that camera and editing choices could have changed this segment into something we would find aesthetically abhorrent, ugly, etc. Or are you saying that, if Glawogger was unable to do this, he should have picked a different location?
Is Glawogger’s subject the work or the worker (or something else altogether)? For me it seems more like the former.
Can images themselves, or sequences in films, be beautiful in their own right without transforming their subject into something beautiful? Think of consumerism and Western civilization (if you don’t agree with my analogy then I’m sure you can find something else that makes the same point). There are hundreds of thousands of incredibly beautiful things that go on as part of (or because of) Western civilization, and many beautiful things one could document related to the creation, manufacture, and purchase of goods, but that doesn’t change the fact that both Western civilization and consumerism are unsustainable in their current incarnations, and as such are wrecking the planet. Nor would any such documentary hint at the incredible body count civilization has racked up on its way to becoming what it is now. Does that then mean that it’s unethical to make anything beautiful about civilization? Or to make a documentary about something specific to civilization that isn’t related to, or doesn’t deal with, any of those negative aspects? One could probably extrapolate this kind of thinking to the point of absurdity (perhaps I already have!), yet would it be using different reasoning to say that, for example, any Hollywood film in which one of the characters is shot to look beautiful while wearing an article of clothing made in a Malaysian sweatshop is immoral?
WORKINGMAN’S DEATH is not about certain political or economic factors that have led to the harsh and undesirable conditions of many people throughout the world. It’s concerned with documenting the result of these factors, or showing (exposing) something that exists out of sight in order to give an account of something by way of putting the viewer through an experience. Since the dawn of civilization there have been people somewhere in the world performing hard, dangerous labor for the profit of someone else. If WORKINGMAN’S DEATH is aiming to be as political as you’re interpreting it to be, then I agree with you that making the viewer feel complacent would be a bad thing. But what exactly should we not be complacent about? The entirety of civilization? And if so, how could such a documentary possibly live up to that expectation?
In WORKINGMAN’S DEATH, Glawogger often takes something abhorrent or shocking and shows the beauty contained within it, which to me is a very different thing than making the thing itself beautiful. Was it unethical for Antonioni to make beautiful compositions out of industrial landscapes and factories in RED DESERT — objects that are toxifying our environment? Antonioni said that he found the industrial skyline to be much more beautiful than the skyline created by the forest across from it, so for him there was inherent beauty in the metal horizon, a beauty that he is not responsible for but which he brings to the fore. It’s also possible to make a beautiful piece of art or jewelry out of human bones. Is the person who photographs this jewelry in a way to bring out its beauty doing something unethical (assuming that what it has been made out of is not being hidden). This, to me, is what Glawogger has done: photographed a ballet of bones. Did he transform something ugly into something beautiful, or did he show something that is morally objectionable (the lives of the workers themselves) and focus on their day-to-day activities rather than their condition? Day-to-day activities which inherently contain things that are beautiful. Or is it this focus, and not the beautification of the activities, that is immoral?
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August 6, 2010 at 11:50 pm
Touche. These are precisely some of the questions I was asking myself when watching the film. I’m still ambivalent about many of these questions, but let me put across what I think of them right now:
First off, you can read more about that in Serge Daney’s masterpiece essay “The Tracking Shot in Kapo”.
In a consumer-capitalistic society, more often than not, I think, one person’s happiness – a beautiful object, a commodity, a gain in wealth – is invariably tied to another’s sorrow, toil or loss. A staunch advocate of dialectical materialism might demand that it’s the film’s job to reveal ALL these connections EVERY TIME, but I feel it is perhaps a bit too much to ask of every film to throw light on the social dynamics underpinning every event. But when you are filming something as immediate as a bunch of workers working on the verge of death, I think the filmmaker has a little more responsibility than to make beautiful images (compared to the interesting examples you give, where the horror is , at least, one or two levels removed from the end product). Imagine yourself in a very pitiable condition and being filmed by a stranger. You might find his action neutral and irrelevant to you. But a third person lookng at this sure does find the action of that stranger very opportunistic and unethical (“sensational journalism” does this often).
The problem with being content with (or focusing only on) the visceral beauty of images is that it decontextualizes them for all the wrong purposes. I’m really comfortable with decontextualizing an image only if that decontextualization serves a higher purpose – a purpose that also recognizes the condition of the people in those images and only if it recognizes them as themselves (as actual people living in actual conditions) and not as some metaphors or icons of universal humanity (Lessons of Darkness and Even Dwarfs Started Small used to be two of my favorite Herzog films, but they seem very questionable to me now). Glawogger hits a lot of right notes in the film. The two reasons why I was disappointed by the Indonesia section are – the unspecificity of Indonesia (If beauty was the only reason he picked the place, I feel, his concern about the work and workers is just skin-deep) and the (very) occasional treatment of workers as figures in a landscape (just a minor complaint, which wouldn’t have been there had Glawogger interacted more with the workers).
“In WORKINGMAN’S DEATH, Glawogger often takes something abhorrent or shocking and shows the beauty contained within it” – We say that these images are beautiful is because, I believe, we know nothing about them. The images seem beautiful precisely because they are decontexualized. With advance apologies for taking this example (I’m really sorry I’ve to cite such an example), consider this: A filmmaker shows an SS general shooting off Jews one by one after having made them stand in a military arrangement. You can wax lyrical about how the filmmaker has a keen sense of space and that the painterly qualities of his compositions show a deep knowledge of classical art, but the truth is that the scene is plainly exploitative because it takes place in – not painting, not a novel, not a play, but – cinema. Now, if a person who knows nothing about the Holocaust watches the scene, he’ll probably appreciate the scene as he would do in a genre film. It would be beautiful to him. But we, with the knowledge of what it is representing, would/should find it utterly repulsive. The plastic qualities of the cinematic medium are always secondary and subservient to its ontological properties. That is what accounts for the power of cinema, IMO.
“The greatness of film is the humbleness of being condemned to photography”– Jean-Marie Straub
Sorry if I’ve digressed too much, I’m, of course, only trying to fine tune my own response to Glawogger’s film (which, in the final analysis, IS a good film), in particular, and documentaries in general. Thanks for helping me out.
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August 5, 2010 at 9:50 pm
I just read the review, the comment by Hectolytus and your follow-up response JAFB, and I can only say I am overwhelmed but this level of analytical brilliance that continues (at this site) to amaze me beyond words. No I don’t anything of value to add here -as I have not seen this documentary – but this must surely be the beginning point and teh definitive treatment of the work, that would even have the director in awe.
Incredible.
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August 5, 2010 at 11:43 pm
Thanks so much, Sam. This is a film that you should see (considering the amount of films you watch, this must be a coffee break for you!). I’m really interested in the spectrum of reactions that the film might provoke.
Cheers!
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August 9, 2010 at 9:31 am
[…] Just Another Film Buff has yet again written a magisterial essay that sits at the very highest level of scholarly writing, raising the bar for the most dedicated cineastes in every sense with this latest examination of Michael Glawogger’s documentary Workingman’s Death: https://theseventhart.info/2010/08/01/flashback-81/ […]
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August 21, 2011 at 4:58 pm
[…] but talking about style in this particular segment becomes rather dangerous. Like Glawogger’s Workingman’s Death (2005), which covered a ship wrecking yard in Pakistan in one of its passages, the third section of […]
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