The Company Men
The crisis, it is easy for anyone. An agreed message for a movie just as wise. A pale morning like other Boston. The young wolf Bobby Walker, Division Chief Gene McClary and fiftieth Phil Woodward donned their suits well tailored, their shoes shined, knot their neckties, get into their luxury cars and start another day in the footsteps of their American dream : to increase again and again the benefit of the company that employs them by filling in passing their own bank account. But today, when the economic crisis is raging, the dollar will the race take the human face. Tragically human. Bobby Walker is returned. And Gene and Phil, it’s just a matter of days.
America’s entrepreneurship, the ability of a monumental indecency, which crushes individual fates on the altar of ever-hungry king dollar has certainly not expected The Company Men to see reflected in film. The illuminating documentary Capitalism: A Love Story of Michael Moore, Inside Job by Charles Ferguson, out soon on our screens, already settled his account. But in the realm of fiction, if Up In The Air approached by the band, still preferring to hide behind the guise of a comedy romantic, The Company Men, the first feature film by John Wells, has matured many years, seems to look much more frankly in the eyes. The crisis, that damned endless crisis ended and that even the wealthy are paying the price. Nobody is immune and is more rapid ascent, the harder the fall.
Addressing through its three characters of the three faces meltdown – how to find a job when you’re a) a young man yet sure of its resources, b) a pattern yet idealistic, c) an employee of any party to arrive not very loud, The Company Men, however, did not approach or even satirical criticism. It is rather by transforming these three men in heroic figures, overcoming this obstacle course or sacrificing them in real martyr, rather it just tickle our empathy, our solidarity and compassion. On the merits, nothing to say, can not be against virtue. Especially since Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones and Chris Cooper, natural and convincing, do not force the note remaining sober and copy the picture dark and melancholy signed Roger Deakins prevents the film from sinking into the depths syrupy melodramatic . But it is on the form that the problem lies more.
Lacking rhythm, tone, casting a passing glance somewhat caricatured on women and carried by a staged purely functional, the film constructs winded speech by pushing too many doors open. That the corporate world is inhumane, that being unemployed is difficult even for the wealthy, that experience forced to rethink its values and desires does not in fact as a discovery. By containing our place alongside these men, refusing to really consider the scope of this crisis and deepening his remarks , The Company Men , unfortunately, remains the gateway to the great film it could have been.
