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IN THE AISLES
Director: Thomas Stuber Cast: Franz Rogowski, Sandra Hüller, Peter Kurth, Andreas Leupold, Michael Specht, Ramona Kunze-Libnow, Henning Peker, Steffen Scheumann, Matthias Brenner, Gerdy Zint MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 2:05 Release Date: 6/14/19 (limited); 6/21/19 (wider) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 20, 2019 A surprisingly deep slice-of-life about the trials of working-class monotony, co-writer/director Thomas Stuber's In the Aisles is all about routines—creating them, becoming lost in them, searching for any little possibility to break them up over the course of a day, a month, or an entire career. It's set in Germany at a huge store, one of those big-box wholesale places where you can find anything for cheap and the whole place is set up in such a way that everything is easily accessible. That's good for the customers, but it means that the workers only have interactions with products, machinery, and occasionally each other. There's something almost de-humanizing about the job, which is entirely about filling the shelves or cleaning up packaging. For Christian (Franz Rogowski), it's what he needs right now, after getting into legal problems with some troublesome friends. The worst trouble he can get into here is being discovered smoking in the bathroom, swiping food that's about to be discarded in the trash, or accidentally dropping a pallet of foodstuff from a forklift. It could cost him his job, but at least it won't mean more time in prison. His teacher for the night-to-day work is Bruno (Peter Kurth), an older man who has been working at the store since it opened. He was once a truck driver, but after reunification, the depot closed to open this place. He misses it—the relative freedom of the road, the power of driving a big vehicle, the chance to see more of the world. Now Bruno is stuck to the confines of the aisles, the quiet motor of an electric forklift, and maybe an hour of daylight after his shift and before he goes to sleep. The heart of the story is Christian bonding with Marion (Sandra Hüller), a married woman who works in the candy aisle. They talk and kind of flirt, but no matter how unhappy her marriage may be, there seems to be little chance of their relationship going any further than that. Thusly, the film progresses, without any desire or need for a plot and with much attention to the sadness, the repetitiveness, and the tiny moments of joy in this job. In the Aisles reveals an entire world in this microcosm of work, in which the characters work to live but have to find a reason to live for work. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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