| Ever worked in a place you knew you didn’t belong? If so, check out this little list of movies featuring characters deeply dissatisfied with their careers.
· Fight Club (1999): Viewers who don’t "get" this modern classic are quick to point out the film’s brutal fight scenes (which really only take up the bare minimum of screen time), but overlook the appalling circumstances of the Narrator’s (Edward Norton) professional life, prior to meeting Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt).
The Narrator’s job is to calculate the legal costs regarding the horrifyingly unsafe cars his company manufactures. He compares these costs with the cost of recalling the vehicles and recommends the cheaper of the two alternatives, even if it means killing hundreds of innocent people due to a vehicular design flaw. His job is to assign a dollar value to human tragedy, a fact that he becomes increasingly aware of as the film goes on.
It gets worse. Part of his job is to visit the sites of particularly awful car accidents, to assess what happened. He and his co-workers look into the hulks of burned-out cars, commenting on where the infant crashed through the windshield and taking guesses as to how long the overweight driver burned in his seat. Seriously grim stuff.
The Narrator explains all this to a businesswoman seated next to him on an airplane – one of his many "single-serving friends" – and points out that preventable accidents like this happen all the time. She’s horrified. "Which car company do you work for?" she asks. He just replies, "A major one."
The thing is, this job seems so… normal. The Narrator is a thoroughly respectable citizen, going around in his shirt and tie and attending meetings, while trying to fill his empty life with expensive trinkets in order to justify the soul-destroying work he had to do in order to afford them. No wonder he snapped.
"This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time."
· Office Space (1999): A cult following has sprung up around this comedy, particularly among irritated office workers who can relate all too well to what they see onscreen.
Initech, the fictitious company that serves as the film’s setting, is a crushingly typical office environment. Hollow buzzwords and mission statements are tossed about with abandon, while cruel layoffs and meaningless work erode the morale of the spineless employees. Any evidence of work dissatisfaction is dismissed with a chirpy cry of, "sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays."
Peter (Ron Livingston) manages to break out of this corporate rut with the help of hypnosis. Basking in a state of lazy contentedness, he blows off his boss’s request for weekend work, knocks down the walls of his cubicle, openly plays videogames on company time and even tells the higher-ups exactly what his work schedule really looks like. ("Well, I generally come in at least 15 minutes late… I use the side door – that way Lumbergh can't see me. After that I sort of space out for an hour. I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about 15 minutes of real, actual work.")
Ironically, this revelation impresses the company executives so much that Peter gets promoted.
· Clerks (1994): Minimum-wage retail slavery is the topic of Kevin Smith’s funny debut feature. Dante (Brian O’Halloran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson) go through the motions with their clerking jobs (at a convenience store and video rental outlet, respectively) while putting up with their frequently irritating customers. Dante usually attempts to be courteous and professional, while Randal has opted to be as rude and unhelpful as possible. Both find the work beneath them, but lack the wherewithal to attempt anything grander. Meanwhile, the customers continue to do the stupid things that customers do, and occasionally provide inspired debates about Star Wars.
These days, many viewers watch this critically acclaimed film on video and wonder what the fuss was about, but those of us who saw it in a theatre remember the feeling of discovering something special. Great stuff. Fans should also check out the short-lived animated series on DVD.
· Brazil (1985): Terry Gilliam’s dystopian nightmare mocks many aspects of 20th century life, including the workplace. Ironically, the most depressing scenes of office drudgery come after the hero, Sam (Jonathan Pryce), has been promoted. Whisked up into a dreary tangle of grey hallways and doors, Sam’s new office is a laughably small wedge of workspace, decorated only with the occasional threatening propaganda poster. His desk keeps moving, as the man in the next office keeps pulling it through the wall. Ineffectual security devices are everywhere, and Sam gets so fed up with the vacuum tube inter-office communication device that he plugs it up, causing an explosion of briefs and documents to rain over the entire building.
Gilliam’s got a knack for this sort of thing. In 1983, his terrific 16-minute short The Crimson Permanent Assurance opened Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983) with a bang. Here, a gaggle of aging office workers slave away for an insurance company, while their labours are compared to those of tormented galley slaves. They rise up and overthrow their employers, opting to become fierce pirates in the treacherous waters of international finance. Hurrah! |
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