Il Posto Review

• 21st Apr 2011

Though coming a good decade after the heyday of Italian Neorealism, this underrated classic from Ermanno Olmi wouldn’t be out of place among the finest efforts of the movement.

Primarily a satire on the rat race, Olmi’s film follows the rapid coming-of-age of an adolescent (Sandro Panseri) over his first few days of working life, from his first commute into Milan to attend the strange selection process by which new recruits are allocated posts, to the moment he sits down at his first desk as a low-level clerk.

Panseri leaves his working-class family home to attend his first day at the job, where he is one of a large group of new recruits put through a series of mental and physical tests designed to determine their individual allocations. It’s during this process that he meets his love interest (Loredana Detto) who he wiles away his lunch hour with, sharing a coffee at a bustling cafe before wandering aimlessly through the city together. These carefree scenes, riveting as they are, only serve to emphasise the grimness of those that follow it, which show how the company de-individualises and strips its employees of their dignity, and will soon bring the budding romance, and Panseri’s wide-eyed innocence, to an end.

Olmi portrays his Kafkaesque corporation with brutal relish: one poignant sub-plot involving the suicide of an ageing clerk and the callous reaction of his employer – in emotionlessly emptying and then reallocating his desk without pausing to acknowledge the tragedy – is particularly effective. As is the protagonists swiftly-nixed relationship with his young love interest. But it’s a satire above all and the director’s dark humour touches everything, from the bizarre series of tests the prospective employees are subjected to, to the small minded squabbling the long-serving clerks are reduced to.

Il Posto is impressively singular in its purpose to attack the modern workplace; not one of its ninety minutes drags or feels frivolous. It’s common for critics to comment on a film losing none of its relevance over time, but with this, Olmi went one further; his prophetic vision of faceless, dehumanising corporations that reduce those that serve them to numbers has actually appreciated in relevance since the film’s release.

Adam Richardson