Filmed in an extremely gritty, almost sepia, black-and-white, "Crane World"
depicts a overweight, middle-aged Argentinian construction worker named
Rulo who is one step away from permanent unemployment. As part of a growing
neo-realist renaissance including films such as "La Ciudad" and "Central
Station," they offer a single-minded focus on the losers in the new, highly
competitive world economy. By the same token, none offers a vision of how
this situation might improve, least of all through the examples of their
characters, who are adrift like pieces of wood in a stormy sea.
Rulo, played by Luis Margani, has been trained by a friend to operate a
crane on a construction site in downtown Buenos Aires. The new job would
offer the 49 year old not only some security, but a sense of dignity. His
life has been a string of one dead-end odd-job after another. None has
provided him with income beyond what is necessary to sustain a very modest
life-style. He lives in a cramped apartment and drives to the construction
site in a battered sedan that periodically breaks down on the city streets.
None of this bothers the affable Rulo, who is always looking on the bright
side.
His pleasures are modest. Hanging out with male buddies, he prepares
barbecue in his kitchen, watches soccer matches on television, tinkers with
engines and chain-smokes cigarettes. The highlight of his life has been a
gig in his youth as a bass player with a rock band called the Seventh
Regiment, named after the military unit two of the band members served with.
An encounter with the proprietress of a sandwich stand near the
construction site leads to a new romance, soon after the woman reveals that
she was a big fan of the band. Keeping with his good-natured personality,
he only chuckles when she blurts out that he used to be so skinny. What
happened to him? He replies that we all get older.
Victim of his own excesses, Rulo discovers that his overweight condition
and general poor health excludes him from the crane operator's job he had
been banking on. In desperation he travels south to an arid and desolate
Patagonia where he has been told that another crane operator's job is just
waiting for him. Not only is the construction site willing to overlook the
physical condition of the workers, it soon becomes obvious that the
employer hardly cares whether they live or die.
A group of a dozen or so men, including Rulo, live in a run-down dormitory
where there is no running water. They work day and night in harsh
conditions. When the boss neglects to provide lunch day after day, the men
hold a meeting to discuss their options. We can not let them treat us this
way, one worker says. During the meeting Rulo remains silent.
Eventually they are all laid off. In a scene that epitomizes Rulo's
seemingly foolish determination to put the best spin on a bad situation, he
meets with the foreman who is putting him on a truck back to Buenos Aires.
They exchange pleasantries about how nice it is to have friends and to
share good times. In the final scene, we see a grim-faced Rulo in his
darkened apartment smoking a cigarette. What it lacks in dramatic
resolution, it more than makes up for in honesty about this character and
his lot in life.
The Rulos of this world constitute the overwhelming majority. All they are
looking for is the opportunity to share simple pleasures with friends and
loved ones. Driven by the lash of an increasingly competitive labor market,
they are forced to wander from country to country, or within a country
itself, looking for a permanent job that pays a decent living wage. At one
time Argentina had a powerful labor movement that influenced film-makers.
That labor movement, as is the case in the rest of the world, has been in
retreat. When it is reborn, it certainly will inspire a different kind of
movie with a different kind of central character. In the meantime, it is
essential that directors like Pablo Trapero have the audacity to describe
the world as it is, in contradistinction to the pleasant lies coming out of
Hollywood and its outposts overseas.
("Crane World" is currently being shown at the Screening Room in New York
City. It closes on April 13.)
Louis Proyect
(The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
