Il posto

Ten years after neorealism’s waning came Ermanno Olmi, with his deceptively simple style of observation. In Il posto, an ingenuous lad just out of school is stuffed into a suit, shoved out of his suburban home, and pointed toward Milan in search of un posto sicuro: a steady job. We follow Domenico’s progress through the dehumanizing labyrinth of the corporate world; along the way he finds and loses a girl scurrying through her own groove in the maze. On his promotion to clerk at a back-room desk, Domenico arrives with his cache of papers, paper clips, and paste-pots for the first day of the end of his life. A nonprofessional actor, Sandro Panseri, portrays Domenico, who with his wide, sorrowful eyes witnesses the tragicomedy that is life for his older colleagues. Il posto is a deeply moving explication of alienated labor, the meaningless regimentation that signifies being an adult.