Week of January 12, 2006, Issue #534
COVER
Salt of the earth
By CAROLYN NIKODYM
As Austrian director Michael Glawogger’s Workingman’s
Death opens, we see a lone man in the Donbass region of Ukraine
digging away with a shovel at a hillside; the giant carcasses of abandoned coke-makers
sit in the distance. The man tells us how, by banging the rocks, he can tell
which hold coal and which do not. The image is in harsh contrast to clips from
a few propaganda films of the former Soviet Union, in which coal-mining hero
Alexei Stakhanov is shown to have single-handedly mined 102 tonnes of coal in
one day. It was, in fact, the myth of Stakhanov that initially drew Glawogger
to this area, long since financially decimated by the collapse of communism—and
while Glawogger managed to unearth some of the original Stakhanov footage, which
he uses in the “Heroes” segment of the film, it is the reality of
coal mining he reveals in the Donbass of today that is ultimately more fascinating.
With Glawogger’s passport, we drop in to watch several men as they descend
into their illegal claim, a tiny mine 40 centimetres high that they crawl into
every day to chip away at the rock for a small amount of coal that they can
use for heat and trade. Lunch is enjoyed lying down, as is the after-meal cigarette—a
fact that seems downright suicidal after last week’s Sago mine explosion
in West Virginia. The footage in this first segment is as unfathomable as it
is claustrophobic, with Glawogger offering us something of a thesis—this
film is an ode to the world of hard labour.
But despite its beginnings in the former Soviet Union, the film does not force
any sort of political agenda. As with his 1998 documentary Megacities, the film
is episodic, with each of the “Five Portraits of Work in the 21st Century”
(the film’s subtitle) offering remarkable views into decidedly different
and dangerous vocations. Each episode comes with its own unique, vivid sense
of place, of colour, sound and even of smell. The Ukrainians offer up their
wry humour from a world tinged in various shades of gray, while Indonesian carriers
shoulder 100-kilo sulphur loads from the mouth of a green and blue volcano in
Java, providing a spectacle for gawking tourists. An outdoor slaughterhouse
in Nigeria sears with red and black, as hawkers call out, “Skin! Innards!
Head!” And ship-breakers in Pakistan dismantle 100-metre tall rusty tankers
with tiny torches, while steelworkers in China blithely talk about the future
of an industry that is dying in other parts of the world—as shown in the
film’s epilogue, where an old smelt in Germany has been refurbished into
a leisure park with a garish light show.
Glawogger uses his lens to tell the whole story; as we watch these (mostly)
men at work, he offers no commentary and very few interviews—much of the
dialogue is, in fact, incidental—and viewers are truly left to draw their
own conclusions. Nonetheless, each of the episodes reveals a story about the
human will, the nature of work and the world we live in.
Vue Weekly recently had the opportunity to speak with Glawogger over the phone;
here are some of the highlights of our conversation.
Vue Weekly: You originally went to Ukraine to research the myth of Alexei Stakhanov.
Did you know you would find these illegal mines?
Michael Glawogger: It came as a surprise, because I was only there to look at
the Stakhanov movement and whether that movement left any kind of traces in
that area. And during the first research, I only visited really run-down mines
and the whole collapse of the situation in Ukraine. Only after a few weeks did
it come out that the daily need of coal and food and money was so desperate
that they all did some form of illegal mining. And you can see the strangest
things there, like people in their own backyards, just digging down to get coal
because there’s coal everywhere in this area, and inevitably you sort
of end up in an old shaft or in an old mine. You could make a long film just
about this area alone.
VW: The second episode in Indonesia deals with a job that’s very prevalent
in the developing world: the carriers. Aside from the backbreaking work of carrying
100 kilos of sulphur from a volcano in Kaweh Ijan, what are some of the dangers
these workers face?
MG: This is really the most ancient form of work that appears in the film, but
I wouldn’t have done this episode if there weren’t this intrusion
of the New World with the tourists, and also with this almost ghost-like place
where you think they live, sort of, on another planet when you watch that. In
terms of the danger that all these people have is that they have no net; if
they hurt themselves, if they have any problems with their lungs, if anything
happens to them—and that’s the same all over, the same in Pakistan,
the same in Ukraine—nobody helps them. They have to pay for themselves;
they are like their own enterprises. Maybe with the exception of Nigeria, because
in Nigeria they are really organized and the slaughtering business there is,
sort of, in good hands—it’s a very well-respected job.
VW: There is irony in the Nigerian segment, because this open-air slaughter
market is full of blood and death, but the workers there seem the happiest of
all of the workers in the film.
MG: That’s a mentality thing. Nigerians have a very positive attitude
towards life. It sounds like a generalization, but you can see it when you enter
into this country. They are very direct, they are sometimes aggressive, they
fight a lot, but they are always positive. Like, when you enter an airplane
and everybody is having a good time, you think, “well, this plane is going
to Nigeria.”
VW: I read in one interview you gave that you want to make a stand-alone film
about the Nigeria segment.
MG: I will do that for the DVD. I was sort of crying over this and the time
that I had for this segment, because I was so stunned by this whole place. It
really has images that stick in your face. It’s a mixture of old paintings
and modern art—so many situations and things come up if watch for that.
VW: This segment is also extremely graphic—was it difficult to stomach?
MG: I have not that kind of a problem. I know what the world is about, and I’m
not shocked to see it. I mean, we eat our fellow creatures, so you’ve
got to kill them—what’s so shocking about that?
VW: The film as a whole is like an essay—when did you decide not to provide
any commentary?
MG: Maybe I decided at the beginning of my filmmaking career, because I thoroughly
believe that film is something completely different. I mean, if you want to
do an essay, then do that—but filmmaking has a different essence and a
different feel to it. Film can provide different things in terms of what you
see that sort of opens your mind, and wording it down closes your mind. I would
never do that, actually. Film has different tools.
VW: The Toronto Film Festival program described your film as a “rejoinder
to those predicting the end of manual labour and a ground-level lesson on globalization.”
Do you agree with that?
MG: I always say that I don’t know what globalization is! I don’t
know—I have a hard time with these kinds of generalization of things.
I have a feeling about something and look around, and I find different aspects
of it. And I find it, most of the time, in different corners of the world. Maybe
that’s the reason that the word globalization comes up, but it’s
nothing that is close to my thinking.
VW: So what do you hope that people take away from the film?
MG: I hope that they get a deeper understanding of what the world we live in
is about, because there’s this rush of images that are around us—I
have the feeling that it’s not like the same world that we actually see.
And with this film, I have the feeling that people are astonished, sometimes,
what the world looks like—that they think that I go to extremes. But what
I show is not so extreme—the world looks like that a lot of the time.
If that’s understood, then I would be happy. V
Workingman’s Death
Directed by Michael Glawogger • Metro Cinema • Fri-Mon, Jan
13-16 (7 pm) • 425-9212