By coincidence, I saw these two New York-centric documentaries back-to-back.
The former is about the famous 1930’s photograph of the construction workers sitting on a steel beam, casually having lunch despite the dangerous position that they’re in. The latter deals with a criminal case in the 1980’s where five teenage boys were wrongly convicted for the sexual assault of a jogger in Central Park.
Both of them portray New York as a place where many cultures come together, and sometimes clash, but I thought The Central Park Five did a better job of it. The five subjects are all very well-spoken, and through their interviews, you come to understand the racial tension that existed in New York at the time. By the end of the film, it’s a real relief that they were exonerated, but at the same time, you still feel angry and sad that they wasted so many years in prison.
Men at Lunch, on the other hand, does not have the same narrative strength. Essentially, it tries to tell the story of who those men on the beam were, but since nobody knows their identities for sure, it settles for making them into symbols of the many Irish immigrants who worked in construction at the time. That’s fine, but the film gets a little repetitive, and keeps telling us how brave they were, how hard life was during the Depression, how the construction workers shaped New York as a city, &c. I found it especially awkward when they tried to draw a connection between those men, and the men who are working now to build the new World Trade Centre tower. The 9/11 scenes seemed a bit out of place and exploitative to me.
Rating:
Men at Lunch: 5/10
The Central Park Five: 7/10
Towards the end of the festival, I get a little tired. I might have enjoyed this one more if I saw it earlier in the week. I realize that it’s a low-budget movie, and I respect what they did technically. Thale has some cool horror moments and some cool action moments, but maybe that’s the problem: it doesn’t feel like either a horror film or an action film. I couldn’t really get into the story because I didn’t know what the characters were after. But again, I was pretty tired.
Rating: 5/10
This, on the other hand, was a much more suitable pace for a weary festival-goer. It’s basically a Chinese kung-fu film, mixed with the style of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (e.g., whenever someone does a kung-fu move, the name of the move is shown in stylized text on the screen), with some steampunk thrown in. Cartoonish action at its finest. It’s the first film in a 2-part series, so structurally, it’s a bit off: what you think will be the final battle is actually just setup for the sequel, which makes the previous battle the actual final battle, and a little unsatisfying.
Rating: 7/10
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