The Human Resources Manager (Friday, March 4, 2011) (12)

I've written before that what I really love about contemporary Israeli cinema are the very interesting, small and straightforward stories. Take, for example, Haim Tabakman's Eyes Wide Open, which deals with very deep matters of love and faith, but does it in a very intimate way using a very tight story and style. In the past, director Eran Riklis has done beautiful small movies, like Lemon Tree, but with The Human Resources Manager he sheds the simplicity and embarks on a bigger movie with a much more complicated, banal story.

The script for the film, by Noah Stollman (based on a book by Abraham B. Jehoshua, possibly based on a real event) is a mess and lacks a sensible structure. In the film, the eponymous and nameless manager works in a big bakery in Jerusalem. It seem that a woman who used to work there was killed in a suicide bombing, but her body was never collected from the morgue. The woman was a guest worker from Romania who has no family in the country, and the HR man is brought in when the tabloid press suggests the bakery was being cold-hearted in the situation.

As a face-saving measure the HR manager has to take the woman's body back to her country. Following him in Europe is the tabloid journalist who wrote the articles against the bakery and has a beef against the man (because journalists HATE middle-managers). What follows is a screwballish journey into the middle of nowhere with a casket on the roof of an Eastern Bloc van.

My two main problems with this movie are that, first, it moves at a glacial pace and by the time you're near the end of the film, it's hard to remember how the hell you got there, and second, it's a really boring, hackneyed plot. There's a back story about how the HR manager is having trouble with his family (because his job at the bakery is really hard... really?!) and this trip is creating more friction with his wife - but he has to go on the trip to show her that he's a good man. That's all well and good, but by the time you're stuck in some ex-communist military bunker (where he gets a bad flu for no reason), all that back-story is totally beside the point. And do we really need another movie about a man who goes off into the wilderness (well, rural Romania) to find himself to be a good man? I've seen it a million times before and this does nothing to improve on past efforts.

I also feel that the tone of the film is weird. It would be best described as a "screwball dramedy", where you're never sure if the next moment will be silly or serious and significant. This style doesn't really work for me as I think the comedy elements are not really funny (mostly just crass and cheap) and it would have been more effective if it had been a drama with comedic elements in it. Ugh.

This is not a bad movie, but not a good one. I'm frustrated that a director I liked so much before would make such an unwieldy, rambling movie. In fairness, the best part of the film is Mark Ivanir who plays the lead guy very well. I just think the script here needs some editing or rewriting. As it is now, it's a bit of a jumble.

Stars: 2 of 4