The movie
Show notes
Life on the job—in this case, the night shift at a supermarket box store—forms the background of German director Thomas Stuber’s gentle drama of love and friendship. Most of us spend close to half of our waking adult lives at work, but I would venture to guess that less than five percent of narrative films take work as their subject. And it’s easy to see why—we seek drama and excitement at the movies, and our jobs don’t usually offer that. They’re repetitive and regular, and on film one would think it would be boring. Still, there’s a largely unexplored trove of experience begging for artistic treatment. German director Thomas Stuber has met that challenge with his second feature, In the Aisles . The picture opens in a mood of mellow humor. The strains of Strauss’s The Blue Danube play over shots of motorized pallets and forklifts gliding through the aisles of a big supermarket box store. Ironic echoes from 2001: A Space Odyssey are perhaps intentional. It turns out that the manager likes to pipe classical music through the store’s sound system for the night crew. As the story begins, we meet a new member of that crew, Christian Gruvert, played by Franz Rogowski, who I’d seen before in two excellent recent German films: Victoria and Transit , and who bears a strong resemblance to Joaquin Phoenix. His character here is withdrawn, doesn’t speak very much, yet pays close attention to what others say, as you can tell by his intense eyes and calm expression. He’s assigned to be trained in his new job by Bruno, a gruff but extremely patient man played by Peter Kurth. The gradual development of friendship between these two is one of the film’s fine touches. The weary company veteran, who used to drive trucks before the supermarket chain moved him to his present position managing the beverage section, and his quiet, enigmatic pupil, communicate through low-key conversations during their breaks, the older man understanding a lot about Christian without having to be told. Chr
More episodes about In the Aisles
