Caught this at the Kendall tonight, I and three other patrons. A great meditation on life and work, explored thru the prism of the lives of the men and women building Mexico City's "Second Deck," the mammoth engineering project to erect an elevated highway that connects and rings the city.The film is a charming escape from your reality (provided, of course, you're not working on the Second Deck yourself) into another, that may perhaps reflect yours. On-site interviews with the ironworkers, safety personnel, and general laborers give insight into their perspectives on playing their parts against the backdrop of a project that some believe they may not live to see finished. Some apply superstition and religion to their roles. Some have incorporated the work into a plan, a means to realize a dream. Others understand it as plain old work, necessary for survival.
Most all of the characters the camera encounters—most dubbed with nicknames by their peers, such as "Shorty," "El Grande," and "El Guapo"—are colorful and charming, even while being boorish (well, okay, sometimes they're just plain rude). You're given brief glimpses into darker and brighter sides to a few of them, in their lives away from the excavation, machinery, and steel. But mostly, it's all about the work. Everyone shares their wisdom, on work, life, and even love, gained from their experiences doing dangerous work, each for his or her own various reasons.
I tried to mentally hold onto a few, but my lame gray matter can now only recall a couple of simple truths... Likely nothing that will change your life, but a few words that cut to the heart of some matters...
If it rains, it rains. If it's sunny, it will be hot.
You can get used to anything. Anything except work.
The film features some cool time lapse photography of construction over a day or so of time, as well as a beautiful flyover of the Second Deck under construction. The only weakness in the film for me was some monotony in the score. The music is very cool, but there's not a lot of variation in it and at times, the percussion and vocal stings of the score was distracting or confusing when mixed with the ambient sound of the work environment.
Check out the trailer and look for it locally in theaters. I think the last screenings in Boston will be tomorrow night at the Kendall. Put it on your Netflix queue for some documentary goodness between... oh... LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN and SHAUN OF THE DEAD. =)
* Later that night. Dammit! I *hate* Landmark/Kendall Square's programming. They only had a 4.10 and a 9.50 show of MAFIOSO tonight, and I just wasn't up for a late show (altho, I thought about it after getting out of PIT). I saw that both MAFIOSO and PIT "absolutely must end Thursday" at the Landmark site, but only just now checked the showtimes for tomorrow, and there's *only* a 4.10 show?! What the F? You know what's going on... They're doing preview screenings of GRINDHOUSE. *sigh* And I can't exactly blame them for that, I guess.
Bleah.
Although, given that it's the last day they have MAFIOSO, you'd think they could knock out a longer-running flick for their GRINDHOUSE fun, right?
I know, I can always watch it on DVD... eventually... but you know me... The big screen, the darkened theater, even if there's only a couple other movie nuts in the room with me, it's just better. Frack.
Keep on keepin on~
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