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Workingman's Death

EMAILPRINTSeventh Art Releasing

Workingman's Death reviews
67
8.0 User Score:

Generally favorable reviews

Based on 10 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 1 votes
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Movie Info

Genre(s): Documentary  |  Foreign

Written by: Michael Glawogger

Directed by: Michael Glawogger

Release Date:
Theatrical: February 24, 2006

Running Time: 122 minutes, Color

Origin: Austria / Germany

Language(s): German / English / Ibo / Indonesian / Mandarin / Russian

Summary

RATING:

Is heavy manual labor disappearing or is it just becoming invisible? Where can we still find it in the 21st century? Workingman's Death follows the trail of the heroes in the illegal mines of the Ukraine, sniffs out ghost among the sulfur workers in Indonesia, finds itself face to face with lions at a slaughterhouse in Nigeria, mingles with brothers as they cut a huge oil tanker into pieces in Pakistan, and joins Chinese steel workers in hoping for a glorious future. (Lotus/Quinte/Arte)

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

83

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Workingman's Death's primary pleasures are aesthetic. Glawogger is an extraordinarily elegant filmmaker with a photographer's eye for striking compositions.

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80

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

Michael Glawogger's rather majestic Workingman's Death takes a symphonic structure to document some of the ugliest and most dangerous shit work on the globe.

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80

The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett

Astonishingly powerful documentary about really, really hard work.

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75

San Francisco Chronicle Walter Addiego

This documentary about men and women performing brutal work tasks for next to no money is full of arresting and eloquent images. It has little dialogue, and little is needed.

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75

New York Post V.A. Musetto

There's scant dialogue in Workingman's Death, but little is needed when majestic camera work by Wolfgang Thaler tells the story so well.

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70

The New York Times Stephen Holden

In the film's production notes, Mr. Glawogger wonders, "Is heavy manual labor disappearing or is it just becoming invisible?" In this visually impressive but proudly unscientific hymn to progress, the answers are yes and yes.

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63

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

It's a triumph of the human spirit that so many people in deadly jobs are able, nevertheless, to marry and have a few happy moments despite lives of hellish labor. Glawogger's intrepid camera finds both the shame and the grace in it.

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60

Variety Leslie Felperin

Pic reps a sequel of sorts to his 12-part "Megacities" about poor folk in separate burgs, and comes soaked in good old-fashioned humanist respect for the dignity of labor, but eventually grows a little monotonous.

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50

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

John Zorn wrote the percussive score, which is compelling throughout.

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50

Chicago Tribune Allison Benedikt

It's not exactly a good time at the movies, and even as pure education, it's a rather dull film with very little dialogue, but Glawogger does succeed in capturing the images, sounds and even imagined scents (oh, those burning goats) of contemporary hard labor, work that has become nearly invisible to us cubicle jockeys.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 8.0 (out of 10) based on 1 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

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