macduffthegaul If Ken Loach and his team didn't see this movie before making I Daniel Blake I'd be amazed. Not in any way a copy, The Measure of a Man takes the same sympathetic look at ordinary people's grim tortured lives as I Daniel Blake. I came to this film completely cold and was immediately gripped by its grittiness, its cinema verite style and its quite outstanding performances. Particularly memorable, the horrific 'Big-Brother-Is -Watching-You' CCTV security system in the supermarket which pries into every detail of anyone either shopping or working on the premises, especially on the tills. No one is beyond suspicion,it seems. When the film's protagonist,a security guard, arrests a succession of shoplifters and till staff, the tension between his need to do his job correctly and his sympathy for his 'victims' is incredibly gut wrenching. This film says an awful lot about how the world of work and the world of unemployment REALLY work with refreshing and moving honesty.

qeter If you are interested in politics try to avoid this movie. To be honest, whatever you are interested in avoid this movie. At present everywhere in Europe the wealthy elite encourages xenophobic forces to play their games against the weak, because this is the only possibility left for their parties to win polls and elections, so they can go on with their neoliberal politics. In such a political environment it helps nobody, if someone makes a movie so boring and apolitical as this one. La loi du marché shows the sad fate of an economical descending family without putting any blame on politics. Maybe Stéphane Brizé wanted to tell me something bigger. I didn't get it.

CineMuseFilms The docu-drama is the genre that brings you up close and personal to real life. Its hyper-realism can make you feel like a witness to a real-time situation, often with jittery hand-held cameras, minimalist acting and cluttered sets that recreate the existential ordinariness of everyday living. We find all of this in The Measure of a Man (2016), an outstanding docu-drama that is excruciatingly realistic. It is also a grindingly slow story that compels us to witness the everyday indignities endured by ordinary people who struggle through harsh economic times.Set in France, the story is told through the eyes of middle-aged and life-weary Thierry (Vincent Lindon) who lost his machinist job a year ago when his factory closed. The plot line is based on a series of vignettes where Thierry endures the indignities of a principled man who must work in an unprincipled world. Plot and technique converge as we are drawn into Thierry's world to feel his suppressed anger and to see how far he can be pushed. The employment agency forces him to undergo training that proves useless; he must participate in self-improvement seminars and endure the sneering insults of less experienced people; and the condescending remarks by bank staff and job interviewers belittle him without offering hope. With a wife and special-needs son to support he must consider selling cherished assets, but then lands a job as a megastore security guard and things look brighter. The store wants to increase profits and lay off older workers so he must police petty pilfering by shoppers and staff. One by one, he sees human misery being multiplied by actions he is forced to take. Without saying a word, we feel his disgust and his moral entrapment.This is an unusual film and one that many audiences will find difficult to watch. While all films try to reach us emotionally, this one deliberately makes the viewer feel uncomfortable and even agitated to the point where some may want to leave. The shaky camera often adopts a fixed viewpoint and stays there for what feels like a squirm-in-your-seat eternity. We are there alongside Thierry while he interrogates a youth, a pensioner and several staff, and are silent witnesses to their palpable fear. The film title speaks of the measure of a man, but this compelling film dramatically demonstrates that the measure of modern society is how it treats the dispossessed and disadvantaged.

PipAndSqueak This is less a 'drama' than a documentary of what happens to people when their already difficult lives are made worse by thoughtless organizations and stupid funding regimes. Thierry has been laid off from his factory job. Presumably, he has stuck this sort of mindless work because he has a disabled son who needs constant care. Thierry is doing everything he can to keep his family together whilst barely scraping together an income. Unemployment is made worse by the organisations who are supposed to be there to help him back to work. They send him on inappropriate training schemes wasting everyone's time and effort as there is no work to be got afterwards. After numerous humiliations Thierry gets himself a shop security job and finds he's forced into making judgements about others that are, in reality, in as dire straights as himself. We wonder at what point he will break, and what he will do when he breaks? Its not a good ending but then, this is all too real for far too many people.