Struggle

The first words heard in the film are: "I feel a
yearning to die..." On the next bed an old lady is seen passively
observing the scene. Struggle, by Ruth Mader, is a film
about surviving. As if created on a drafting board, the film represents an
immediately visible truth: to be alive is to make money in order to survive. It
is immaterial to the young Pole, Ewa, how she earns her money. Four jobs, four
places of work: a strawberry field, a turkey processing plant, and two manual
cleaning tasks. A young man of the house where she is cleaning the swimming
pool delivers her a snack and carefully places it at a safe distance, politely
informing her that the lady of the house has entitled her to a short rest.
There is no communication with anyone, not on the strawberry field, not with
those who wait with her at dawn on the shoulder of the road to be picked up for
work. Nor is there any explicit unpleasantness. Job exploitation on the street
maintains respectable boundaries; there is no molestation, except in an attempted
police roundup. Ewa narrowly escapes a desperate chase across a field, after
which she collapses in sobs. Initially, the cinematic approach seems to be
intensely sensual and documentary. It is as if one could feel the fingers
working in the strawberry fields, identify with the monotonous motions of
turkey gutting. It is, however, more than that. It is almost a fictitious, a
virtual documentary approach. The working conditions are choreographed and shot
as in a huge melodrama. The scenes of the strawberry pickers are of staggering
intensity. We see human figures against a backdrop of an expanse of earth, we
see the precise movements of plucking; blue plastic and a green landscape;
groups of two or sometimes three all placed in a picturesque focal point of
action in close-ups contrasted with long shots of low hanging clouds. The eye
reposes in this space, while the fatigue of the workers is almost physically
experienced. At the same time, the film documents this labour, with its alien
nature and improvised living conditions. It also evokes associations of classic
photography, that of Francois-Millet, and Walker Evans, specifically, and of
the American depression in general. People stand, sit, work in groups, but are
at the same time alone. This is a graphic depiction, devoid of contrived drama.
We realise that none of the motions and gestures of work can be packaged in a
narrative context of development or satisfaction. Only these utilitarian,
repetitive movements are relevant; they provide remuneration at the end of the
day. All activity is interchangeable. In the second part of the film the
perspective changes from the transparent situation of the young Polish woman to
the face of a local real estate agent who wanders through empty buildings. The
verbal exchange is perfunctory professional jargon. But there is still no
communication. Conversations between father and daughter are trivial and
mechanical. "Do you love your daddy?" "Sort of."
Lonely meals are taken in emotionally void empty spaces. There is male small
talk with a fellow businessman about sexual exploits. The younger of the two
proposes a demeaning lascivious ritual. It is not apparent which is the most
moving scene in the movie. But perhaps it is this one, in which a man is ready
to submit himself to a hanging ceremony in order to experience a genuine
sensation or merely to prove that he is fearless: "I yearn to
die." We are witness to the ultimate vulnerability of his body, at the
threshold of pain. It is, however, seen with the detached camera's view of an
eyewitness, from a distance, as if viewing a forbidden religious rite. Even in
a sex club, distance is maintained by remote peep holes, as from a reversed
telescope. Eroticism, tenderness, and touch remain out of reach. What makes
this film unique is that it combines mesmerising depth perception with
immaculately choreographed images in an attempt to portray a phenomenon as
prosaic and touching as naked survival in an emotional no-man's-land, while
songs on a car radio stubbornly conjure up a world of love and joy. A
marvellous film about survival. In would-be simple, but, in fact, exquisitely
defined images, with intricate nuances of colour, and a complex panorama of
sound, the film encompasses everything a film should: work, love, death.
Birgit Flos

Directed by: Ruth Mader
Screenplay: Ruth Mader, Barbara Albert, Martin Leidenfrost
Photography: Bernard Keller
Editing: Niki Mossböck
Sound : Karoline T. Heflin
Production: Ruth Mader
Featuring: Aleksandra Justa, Gottfried Breitfuß, Martin Brambach, Margit
Wrobel, Rainer Egger

Organisation: Kinodvor
In co-operation with: City of Women
With the support of: Austrian Film Commission