He’s either perceived to be too old for an entry-level job or asked for an addition qualification. When the film opens, a world-weary Thierry is sitting in an employment center, earnestly trying to understand why the training course he took for more than four months wouldn’t land him in a job. Thierry and his colleagues of similar age-group are laid-off in a round of downsizing some 20 months prior. Both these movies show how a worker, irrespective of gender, in the contemporary market has to emotionally demean themselves to secure a job. Another important feature that serves as perfect companion piece to The Measure of a Man is Dardenne brothers’ Two Days One Night (2014). Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata (2008) and Laurent Cantat’s Time Out (2001) has brilliantly scrutnized similar themes. Nevertheless, the mention of gender in English title refers to the movie’s other pivotal theme: the sense of self-worth a salaried, middle-aged man gains by being a breadwinner which slowly fritters away while being unemployed. The film’s French title translates to ‘The Law of the Market’ which better reflects the contentious downturn in the French labor market.
Visually, Brize has shot his feature in Verite style, employing minimalist aesthetics and extracting restrained performances all around. However, this anger and desperation simmer beneath the narrative’s placid surface, which although is never overtly expressed could be thoroughly felt.
#THE MEASURE OF A MAN 2015 MOVIE#
Similar to the works of Ken Loach and Dardenne Brothers, The Measure of a Man is an angry movie about the plight of economically dispossessed in an indifferent labor market.
In Stephane Brize’s quietly devastating drama The Measure of a Man (‘La loi du marche’, 2015) French star Vincent Lindon plays 51-year-old Thierry Taugourdeau, a laid-off longtime factory worker seeking employment.
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