There are a few of us here at ScreenAnarchy who have or have had day-jobs in the corporate world. It is a job which often comes bundled with the age-old, comically traumatic, Team Building exercise: A corporate retreat, consultant training (anyone familiar with 6 Sigma might know what I mean), or just plain old throw 'the troops' together for something - anything - which might have the effect of achieving that elusive morale boost.
The scene which first brought this list to mind was, oddly enough, Hal Hartley's 1990 film "Trust" which features a young Adrienne Shelly intentionally falling backwards into the arms of her would-be lover, Martin Donovan. I've always been unclear if Hartley was parodying this consultant trick - trust your co-workers to not make you look like a fool - or somehow via his film it made it into the toolbox of those very same consultants. (As a rather morbid aside, Shelly died young at 40 just over a month ago in the ultimate inversion of this trust - a random murder faked to look like a suicide).
I have found myself on more than one occasion wishing that corporate management or the consultants they hire would try to achieve their goal with a piece of cinema. And lo, after a few moments reflection in these types of (highly distracting) situations, I picture in my mind, Alec Baldwin giving his moral-crushing sales-talk in Glengarry Glen Ross or Ricky Gervais breaking out his guitar to play "Freelove Freeway."
Put on your ID badge and file those TPS reports, for I give you five films which are wholly inappropriate for employee motivation.
Severance - OK, admittedly an easy one. Chris Smith's sophomore film is often described via a reference to Gervais and Co.'s The Office. The London branch of a military weapons company are invited out to a 'luxury retreat' in Hungary to do a little team building. Beginning with a set of familiar office types - The indecisive boss, the sycophant, the party-guy and the serious but sexy girl - things change quickly when the retreat becomes a bloodhunt from the local crazies. Team Building becomes a do-or-die exercise for which these office drones are not capable of coming together. The body count grows, along with the gore and a surprising amount of black comedy. Severance is a wilder ride than a day building paper helicopters in a dreary conference room. (Full ScreenAnarchy Review)
El Metodo - Based on a piece of successful theater in Spain, El Metodo is a psychological mind-fuck dressed in snappy pin-stripes and sports bleached pearly-whites. Set in the not-to distant future where there is a massive anti-globalization riot going on in a large Spanish City, the movie is claustrophobically set entirely inside a boardroom on the 100th floor of multinational skyscraper. Seven business executives are subjected an unconventional job interview. They are pitted against one another using hypothetical scenarios of the type dreamed up by Reality Television writers. You fail a challenge, and you get the boot. But El Metodo takes this form of satire to the breaking point as the company doing the hiring lays on the psychological nastiness which brings out the absolute worst in human behavior. Funny, unpredictable and ultimately will make you want take a shower afterwards. In other words: Highly recommended. (Full ScreenAnarchy Review)
10 Little Indians - "I find it a singular lapse of manners - a house party, and the host the last to arrive!" Several folks who do not really know each other are placed in a mansion on a mysterious island with an absent host. They slowly begin to be killed one by one for no apparent reason. This Agatha Christie novel has seen several cinematic interpretations including one in 1945 titled "And Then there Were None". Another version was made in 1965 with Christopher Lee as the mysterious host. It was made in Bollywood as well in the same year. 1974 saw another "And Then There Were None," this time featuring Orson Welles as the mysterious host, as well has British heavyweights Oliver Reed, Herbert Lom and Richard Attenborough in the ensemble. A Russian version followed in 1987, good luck finding that one. Finally in 1989, there was a version featuring Donald Pleasance. (Although, one could make a case for James Mangold's "Identity" being a bit of a genre-bending remake). What makes this tale compelling enough to be remade more than some Shakespeare plays? Well it involves a mixture of petty and honest people thrown into a situation where nothing makes sense and politicking seems to be the only way to solve the mystery: The middle managers in the modern corporate landscape.
Night of the Living Dead - How is this for a team building exercise? For no apparent reason, the dead have risen from the grave, intent on eating the living. A hodgepodge of survivors butt heads against one another over potential courses of action while holed up in an old farm house. Because the closing shots of the film resembled the racial tensions and upheavals of its day and the rock-solid hero of the film, Ben, is black, Night of the Living Dead is usually viewed through the lens of race parable. And Romero didn't get around to attacking consumerism until the follow up film Dawn of the Dead. But putting race and social ills aside for a moment, the first modern zombie film is a stunning example about people in a stressful situation failing to work together in any constructive way. Nothing goes according to plan, and while Ben exudes a cool leader-like competence over the course of the film, he can never pull his 'team' together. Besides go to any large meeting: There is always a Barbra and always Harry Cooper. Always.
Battle Royale - We all know that the training ground for office politics is the rough and tumble, not to mention intensely hormonal, high school environment. Koushun Takami and Kinji Fukasaku pit an entire grade 9 class against one another on an island groomed just for that purpose according to an extreme government discipline programme. Takeshi Kitano provides the 'kick-off' speech and provides the weapons for these young teens to slaughter their best friends in the name of survival. While there are a few groups that gather to survive the government sponsored scholastic endurance test, Battle Royale is the best example of the antithesis of team work: The kids are all wearing collars which will self-destruct if they do not backstab one another until only one student remains. Presumably they will become class president on their way to moving on to CEO of some big Japanese Multinational.