For ordinary people living in britain, that is, those working families, they are completely incompatible with the "British wind" that we are familiar with, women are busy in the kitchen dishwasher every day, men have to work continuously, and families are struggling on the subsistence line, which is the truest portrayal of the british bottom people.
Ken Lodge, who won the Palme d'Or at Cannes for "I Am Black," brought us another realist masterpiece, "Sorry, We Missed You," at the end of last year.
At the beginning of the film, the male protagonist Ricky goes to the courier company to apply for a job. He had changed many jobs before, and had done all kinds of chores, but due to the difficult conditions and the meager income, he hoped to find a stable and lucrative job.
Although this courier job can meet his requirements, the premise is that he must not rent a car in the company for transportation, or do not bring his own vehicle. Ricky calculated that it was more cost-effective to sell the car his wife used to commute to and buy a brand new van.
This is the beginning of the film and a turning point in the fate of the Ricky family. Until then, the family had to rely on the meager income of her husband, Ricky, and the salary of his wife, Abby, as a caregiver. Of course, they also have to pay for the tuition of their two children, the eldest son Seba and the youngest daughter Lisa. As the head of the family, Ricky does not want to live a life on the subsistence line, you know, when their son loses one Of the Goltes coats, they can no longer afford to buy another.
Therefore, this courier job, for Ricky, on the one hand, means to change the fate of the entire family, on the other hand, it also implies that if he fails or retreats, he will have to pay a heavy price. This broken decision was originally intended to change the family's bad situation, but as the film's story progressed, it gradually went to the opposite quagmire.
The eldest son, Seba, is the time bomb.
He first sold his only winter jacket and bought a large amount of acrylic paint.
Later, because of the fight in the school, the school let the parents come to the school to negotiate, which made Ricky mood fluctuate at work.
Then, Seba was ordered by the school to suspend school for fourteen days and study at home. This led directly to Ricky and Abby's first quarrel since they met.
Then, Seba stole three cans of acrylic paint from the supermarket and was arrested by the police. This chilled Ricky, and he was also fined hundreds of pounds by the company for accompanying his son at the police station.
Finally, due to a misunderstanding, Ricky thinks that Seba stole the keys to the transporter, which brings the father-son relationship to a freezing point. And because Ricky couldn't drive, he was penalized again by the company.
The fatal blow, of course, was that Ricky was robbed by three on the street and was destroyed with a scanner gun, which cost him a thousand pounds.
Someone might blame Ricky's ignorant son and the unlucky robbery. After all, not every courier has such a bad child, or is robbed on the street at any time, this is just an isolated case. However, the truth is that even if Seba is a good student and never adds to the chaos, Richiefu will protect his body, and his luck is excellent, he still can't escape the curse of "fate".
There are two plots in the film that support this. Among Ricky's transport team, one of the co-workers' transport trucks was hit, preventing him from continuing to deliver the courier. But for Maloney, the supervisor, this responsibility has nothing to do with the company and is his own responsibility.
In another passage, when Ricky was on leave, Maloney used the example of the previous four drivers who had been denied leave to say that they did not care about the family affairs of these drivers at all, even if they were chased by their wives, their sisters suffered a stroke, they were sick and had surgery, or their daughters wanted to commit suicide, none of which had anything to do with him. As a franchise driver, you either choose to obediently go to work or choose to hand over a heavy fine. Besides, there is no other way.
So, Ricky, along with his wife Abby, has fallen into a vicious circle that they can't break out of, they gamble everything and work hard to earn money with honesty and hard work, but the more this happens, the more their wealth is exploited. The point is that their original purpose was to make the family better and better, but they were gradually drifting away from it in their busy work. Eventually, the family members become stumbling blocks in Ricky and Abby's work, and it's clear that they've unknowingly put the cart before the horse. Work was originally just a means, and the family was the end, but now this honest couple can no longer sort out their minds.
In the nineteenth century, with the maturity of European industrial society, British society under the factory employment system, in the steam and endless fatigue, gave birth to the first generation of "alienated" working class, who entered the endless workshop from the original pastoral pastoral. Men are no longer brothers and sons, women are no longer mother and daughter sisters, they become chaplin's inspiration for the creation of "Modern Times", an industrial screw that has lost its joys and sorrows.
This repression, after more than a hundred years, did not disappear in Britain, although the "eight-hour working day" was gradually implemented during the period, the trade union movement was gradually improved, and the welfare system was gradually improved, but the alienation of people, or the phenomenon of extreme poverty, like an infectious disease, will never die with the changes of the times.
The most heart-wrenching and shocking scene of "Sorry, We Missed You" is when Ricky slaps Seba hard while drinking wine, which is a clear sign of domestic violence. You know, from the large number of details in the early part of the film, it is not difficult to see that Ricky is an honest and harmonious man, especially when Abby mentions that he is becoming more and more like his violent father, Ricky scolded the bastard.
But such a person has changed after all, but is this Ricky's own problem? Perhaps we should get a glimpse of the truth from Abby's dream description.
"Sometimes I have nightmares, falling into quicksand, and the kids pull me out with branches, and it feels like the harder we work, the longer we work, the more we get into that bunker."
This is the confusion in the minds of most British working families. When a group of people, like Sisyphus, have been pushing the boulder diligently all their lives, but they can never stop, and they are crushed down by the boulder again and again, we should not ask Sisyphus whether he has tried his best, but should stand in the distance to see if the ground under the stone is a steep slope.
Obviously, although director Ken Lodge has shown one Sisyphus after another in a large number of realist masterpieces such as "I Am Blake", "Life on the Bottom", "Carla's Song" and so on, his ultimate goal is to take us to see the steep slope under the stone. In "Sorry, We Missed You," the symbol of this ramp is Maloney, the head of the courier company, and the new work system behind him.
Maloney gives the impression of a pure villain. When he and Ricky first talked about the details of the work, he had already explained all the rights and responsibilities, whether it was the problem of using a car or the expensive handheld scanner. Even in the face of Ricky's leave, his sharp evaluation of the express delivery industry, as well as the cold and bone-chilling revelation, let us, the audience who are accustomed to express delivery, even a little ashamed to see this scene. Because what most people value is the price of the courier, the speed of delivery and the damage of the courier.
This can also be confirmed by two bridges in the film, one is that Ricky met a Newcastle fan when delivering the courier, and he himself was sneered at by customers because he was wearing a Manchester United jersey.
The other is that when he delivers valuables such as mobile phones, the customer does not show valid documents and completely ignores the risks borne by the courier.
If this kind of "alienation" is still a disease left over from the first industrial revolution, then the "courier" industry is a brand new product brought about by the "Internet of Things" era set off by the Internet economy. Although as early as before the birth of Taobao and Amazon, there were also logistics and transportation, which required delivery personnel, but their working status and the current courier are very different.
To this end, the film not only explains the work content of Marloni to Ricky, but also the more critical point is the bridge section where the youngest daughter Lisa runs a courier with her father. In this movie, there are only two warm bridges, one is that the Ricky family of four takes a car in order to send Abby to the customer's home, and the other is that Lisa and her father deliver the courier together, and a scene in the official poster of the film takes a nap after the father and daughter send the courier. It was a moment when the family thrived in the warmth of the modern indifferent space.
However, even such a hard-won time between father and daughter, because the courier company does not allow a second person in the vehicle based on security, this emotional part of human nature is ruthlessly strangled.
In the climactic scene, Ricky is robbed, and the company not only does not pay him health insurance, but also demands compensation, which is a grotesque theory that will become more and more common under the so-called "gig economy".
The so-called "gig economy" is the "self-employment" advocated by the express delivery company in the film, the company provides platforms and job opportunities, employees provide their own production tools or lease production tools to the company, but the company is not responsible for all rights and responsibilities, including insurance and pension and other benefits.
To put it bluntly, it is a migrant worker or a migrant worker, but it has lost the necessary protection. For highly educated, high-ability, high-background workers, this may not be a problem, but for most of the low-level workers, this kind of work without any guarantee is undoubtedly to let them walk barefoot in the dark. And what is the British government's attitude towards this? "I Am Black" has already answered this question.
Every impulse Ricky had come from every loss of control of the situation. He longed for his two children to be able to go to school peacefully, without any fluctuations in his heart, so that he could complete the courier work that could not be wrong in the slightest. However, in reality, this is not possible, for Seba, an adolescent boy, he has witnessed not only what has happened in this family, but also all the injustices in the british underclass.
As a result, Ricky began domestic violence, not so much a symbol of the concentrated outbreak of inner repression as a common evil of new technology, the gig economy and the absence of the welfare system.
Viewers who have seen "Sorry, We Missed You" should feel that it tells a depressing and powerless story. But in comparison, in addition to its repression and weakness, its image is more rough than indifferent.
At the beginning of the film, when Ricky and Maloney talk about work, Ken Lodge allows the conversation to appear in a long black screen. It's a sad sign that this conversation isn't going to be made by someone special, but is going to happen to any worker at the bottom of Britain. Ricky's repeated job changes, the cold on the construction site in winter, radiate to all the unfortunate people in this black screen.
After the tragic tune comes out, it is pale. The film maintains low contrast and low saturation filters at all times to capture the norm in British society.
This is actually a retro usage, with the texture of a documentary film, which is related to Rocky's early experience in TV drama shooting, and of course, it is also related to his consistent pursuit of "blurred color". Even in the historical war film "The Wind Blows the Wheat Wave", he still did not give up. This is very different from the picture style of most movies today that pursue high contrast and high saturation.
Rocky's naïve tone has always been linked to the political leanings of his left, and he is reluctant to let the colors stir up the real pain, as if it were a color insult and betrayal. Therefore, there are a lot of realistic scenes in the film.
For example, Ricky scans express mail at a courier company.
A road that runs endlessly but is lifeless.
Empty but unattractive streets.
And the billboard next to the scaffolding.
These images flattened the Ricky family and made them ordinary people without characteristics. This is also reflected in the casting considerations, whether it is Chris Hitch, who plays Ricky, or Debbie Honeywood, who plays Abby, neither of their faces have any star characteristics. Debbie Honeywood, in particular, put her in the crowd and you don't think she's a film actress, and this rigorous realism ability allows Ken Lodge to be placed in the hands of Italian neorealism.
Once the space is turned indoors, Rocky has Reiner Fassbinder's scheduling style. Whether in Ricky's own home or in the different families where Abby works as a caregiver, in small spaces, the film often maintains close-up or even close-up shots to create an atmosphere of coercion, shattering the couple's hopes a little bit, leaving only the submissive obedience.
Although Rocky has always maintained a simple documentary style, his films often bring unexpected explosive power, and this ability undoubtedly exists in various symbols and sudden scenes.
The purpose of Seba's graffiti on the streets is to resist advertising symbolizing consumerism.
The old man, with his three-legged dog in his arms, passed by Lisa.
Abby was talking about her sadness as her left hand uneasily rubbed the corner of the photo.
Or maybe it's the episodes: Seba's female classmates have to drop out of school and run away because of bullying on campus.
Abby accompanies Ricky to the hospital, and when arguing with Maloney, she explodes into a foul mouth and has an emotional breakdown.
These bridges, which could have all been dug deeper, become threads of cotton and linen under Rocky's lens, coiled throughout the film, constituting a symbol of imperfection, making the Ricky family become more and more deformed and out of control. But Rocky often let the faces of a family of four be overwhelmed by the crowds of people on the street. Or, as in the hospital visit, the camera shifts to people with dull and bitter faces, reminding me of the Dutch peasants who had been tarnished by the years in Van Gogh's early sketches.
At the end of the film, Ricky plans to continue driving with a serious injury, but Abby and Sebala stop him, not wanting the man with the burden on his shoulders to continue to destroy his body. This human love is torn and twisted in the roar of the truck engine, and we can't judge whether Ricky's behavior is right or wrong, because this is reality, and the background of reality is often helplessness, and in the face of helplessness, we only have powerlessness.
The title "Sorry, We Missed You" is revealed at the end of the film, which is when Ricky delivers the courier, and if the customer is not at home, he will put this warm tip with the words "Sorry, we missed you" into the door. But we know that Rocky uses such a sentence to refer both to Ricky and Abby, who missed the growth of Seba and Lisa because of their work, and to satirize british society as it moves forward and "politely" misses these lower classes.