(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Over the Years
Director and photo: Nikolaus Geyrhalter
One is defined by one's work. If you are unemployed, you are defined by your unemployment. In the documentary Over the Years we meet a number of Austrians who have to adapt to a life as unemployed. The three-hour film not only gives us insight into specific fates in present-day Austria, but also raises general questions about work and leisure, about older and newer production conditions, and about quality of life versus production efficiency.
The film starts in Waldviertel, Austria, in 2004: We are in a textile factory that has long been dying. The few remaining workers appear to be persistently on their way to their own ghost existence. It is as if the factory premises are about to leave, rather than the other way around. Large overall images and a sharp direct sound underline the cold emptiness of the place and give a strong feeling that it belongs to a bygone era. As the chairman somewhat jokingly puts it, he has run a closed factory for 36 years.
"Cars are always better than textiles," says one of the workers, who thinks the girlfriend has chosen a more forward-looking career path. The world no longer has time for handmade diapers. Following Austria's entry into the EU and the opening of the country's borders, the local textile factory has faced competition in a world where Pampers is the obvious winner. One worker claims that the sense of price has replaced the sense of quality.
Non-psychologist efficiency. The factory will be closed during the year, and we will follow several of the employees over the next decade. How do they cope with unemployment? Have they found any new jobs? How is the new job compared to the old one? How has life ever been? Director Nikolaus Geyrhalter, who has directed, produced, written and filmed many critically acclaimed documentaries since the 90s, provides us with Über die Jahre (Over the Years) an unsentimental and non-psychological observation of people having to leave their old lives.
A traditional issue in the portrait genre is whether to portray people as individuals or as professionals; another is to what extent one should interpret the people one is portraying. Geyrhalter is cautious and relatively passive behind the camera, asking very general questions. These do not reveal as much a particular perspective – be it moral, political or personal – that they suggest that the portraits' distinct personalities, presence and communication style should appear. Geyrhalter at the same time draws a clear interpretive framework in which the dividing line between private person and professional is blurred. His questions, and the overall images he chooses – which constantly show people in the environment that surrounds them – mean that we first and foremost see his objects in light of the working conditions in which they live.
The world no longer has time for handmade diapers.
Whether Geyrhalter is dealing with individuals or families, he is systematic about how he portrays them strictly framed by his environment – an environment they are defined by, but also mastered. Like the Chinese documentary Wang Bing (Three Sisters, 2012; To Madness Do Us Part, 2014) avoids Geyrhalter isolating its protagonists from the environment in which they live; the workplace, the home or the nature emerge as unbreakable ground conditions and take a central place in the film. Had the people wandered out of the pictures, what remained was similar to unexplored landscape paintings.
"Time Print". But they stand here, these people, and they stand here for a long time. Most of them are utterly miserable – but the director insists on his long-drawn-out roofs – which emphasize the silence, the breaks, the poses and the uncertain gaze – as if time would drag the nut into a talking expression. It is as if both the long period of time the footage is taking place, and these lingering sequences, will ensure that something about the portraits' personality and living conditions – something important and subtle – at some point and in some way will manifest themselves.
Geyrhalter seems to work from Andrei Tarkovsky's idea of a "time pressure" (time-pressure) in the movie image. Tarkovsky believed that “time runs through the picture despite - and not because of – the mowing ». "Cutting brings together images that are already filled with time." IN Over the Years this seems to be a guiding principle. Every one of the pictures is tongue of time, as if they themselves are getting older with the people they portray.
One of the most interesting encounters happens with the film's slowest person – a person with a particularly laid-back demeanor. The meetings with him ask some basic questions about the time we live in: one about the modern "mistake" of being asocial, and the other about being satisfied that things take time. This man enjoyed his work at the textile factory, and expressed concern early on how he would be doing in another profession. In modern working life, social skills are important for success, and this man defines himself as social. He takes care of his mother and otherwise spends his days on hobbies like writing down the lyrics to the 13 songs he has in the CD collection. He also traps trees that he uses as wood, and can spend more than ten hours on one of them. It's not about profitability, he answers a question from Geyrhalter; this is something he likes to do. Besides: Seeing the wood burning in the fireplace afterwards, after all the wear and tear, gives a very own satisfaction.
Geyrhalter is not argumentative, but with its consistent retention of slowness it provokes a silent criticism of a modern economy that squeezes out what is not going away. In our modern (post) industrial society, we lose some closeness to the materials we use and the products we consume. And are we not possibly losing here, in the endless demand for greater efficiency and better competitiveness, a human circumstance that gives things a certain weight of time and consideration?
Every one of the pictures is tongue of timeas if they are getting older with the people they are portraying.
In recent decades, Austria, a traditional industrialized country, has undergone major economic changes. The country has been struggling with a trade deficit and many industrial workers have lost their jobs. Geyrhalter manages to give a dignified and compassionate expression to the silent stride of the afflicted – their enduring and indigenous existence in a world that, in their tireless pursuit of time saving, squeezes out the handmade and local.
Geyrhalter's portrait is a bit like the man with the trees: He walks slowly – stands outside the requirement of efficiency and finds proximity and timeliness to his material, so that the result is characterized by the good endeavor.
The director himself has stated that the project, with its lengthy recording period, would not have been financed today. Austria's public broadcaster ORF showed goodwill and postponed the deadline year after year because they believed that time would increase the quality of the film. Something to include in our domestic film policy, which does not facilitate letting filmmakers explore their themes over time. Over the Years initiates thoughts on how time is spent and how society and professional roles organize our time.
Contact info@geyrhalterfilm.com for inquiries about DVD purchases.
Eidsaa Larsen is a film critic in Ny Tid.
endreeid@gmail.com
