TIFF Report: Workingman's Death Review

Workingman's Death is a terrible documentary. It is also, without a doubt, one of the most shocking and beautiful films that I have seen all year.

I understand that this sounds like cognitive dissonance, but I cannot recommend this film as a purely visual experience enough.

Michael Glawogger decided to cover the 6 most dangerous and difficult jobs that he can find to prove to us that the hard working man, in a way, is not dead, he's just shifted location. He shows us, in 'Heroes', Ukrainian miners working in a shaft that is roughly 16 inches high, who sit, eating lunch and joking, in an amount of space that makes me feel like running outside right now just thinking about it. In 'Ghosts' he shows us the men from Kawa Ijen, Indonesia, who toil mining sulphur at a volcano basin, choking in the fumes, slaughtering goats as ritual to appease those who have died in the process. The slaughter of goats begins to fell like the main thrust of the film in 'Lions' where Nigerian slaughterhouse workers kill animal after animal in quite graphic and shocking detail. 'Brothers' is the story of Pashtun labourers in Pakistan dismantling ancient beached tankers piece by piece. Finally, 'Future' describes the fears of Chinese steel workers in Liaoning, and the Duisburg-Meiderich smelting plant turned into a leisure park.

All of this is filmed with a completely unfeeling eye. No questions are asked, no descriptions are given. Who are the Pashtuns being paid by? Where does the sulphur go? Heck, what do you even use sulphur for, outside of high school science classes? (a quick browse at Wikipedia tells me the men of Kawa Ijen may have fertilizer companies to blame). Of course, saying that, you could claim it's my understanding at fault, a very western white guilt, that I'm looking for the west to be the cause so I can fret about it. Not at all. The beautiful visuals just make me want to know so much more than the film gives. A simple voice over could, it's true, have distracted from the stark visuals, and at worst could have insulted the intelligence, but the film needed more than simply its (great) industrial soundtrack. Michael Glawogger and his cinematographer, Wolfgang Thaler, have created some wonderful images that will be burned in my mind for a long time to come. Some gladly, such as the sight of a majestic rusted tanker in the slow setting sun. The Ukrainian miners standing huddled round a fire in the most remarkable post apocalyptic landscape. Duisburg-Meiderch plant, lit multicoloured at night. And some not so – the repeated sight of the tendons of an animal's throat being cut actually made me flinch and look away more than once. This is a work of art more than a movie, and terribly boring, I'm sure, if you cannot get into it. But I was spellbound.