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Workingman's Death
Metascore
67 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 10 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 10
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 10
  3. Negative: 0 out of 10
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  1. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Nathan Rabin
    83
    Workingman's Death's primary pleasures are aesthetic. Glawogger is an extraordinarily elegant filmmaker with a photographer's eye for striking compositions.
  2. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Ray Bennett
    80
    Astonishingly powerful documentary about really, really hard work.
  3. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Michael Atkinson
    80
    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.
  4. New York Post
    Reviewed by: V.A. Musetto
    75
    There's scant dialogue in Workingman's Death, but little is needed when majestic camera work by Wolfgang Thaler tells the story so well.
  5. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Walter Addiego
    75
    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.
  6. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    70
    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.
  7. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jami Bernard
    63
    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.
  8. Variety
    Reviewed by: Leslie Felperin
    60
    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.
  9. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Allison Benedikt
    50
    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.
  10. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Rosenbaum
    50
    John Zorn wrote the percussive score, which is compelling throughout.
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