The Job (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.