Eran Riklis has a talent, as exemplified in the pitch perfect LEMON TREE, for acutely laying bare the absurdity of non-human entities getting in the way of peoples ability to get on with their lives. In THE HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER, its more than the government, or rather governments, that is wreaking havoc, its a corporation and the power of the tabloid press, neither of which are particularly concerned with the people involved, but are worried about projecting the correct image, no matter what the truth of the situation is. That the eponymous manager (Mark Ivanir) is not having much luck getting on with his personal life, a separation, a disengagement from a daughter, both of whom have had too many promises broken, only adds to the emotional turmoil he experiences when caught up in a Kafka-esque situation that, true to Kafka, he did nothing to cause, but must do everything to rectify.
A temporary worker at Jerusalems largest bakery is killed in by a suicide bomber. The woman was foreign, complicated enough, and more complicated due to a supervisor with a soft heart and a softer heard, she hadnt actually worked for the company for almost a month, though was still collecting a paycheck. But when the body lays in the morgue unclaimed and, worse, unburied, longer than the three days that constitute the limits of what religious law demands a tabloid reporter, looking for a scoop, investigates. A paycheck from the bakery and the ensuing media-fueled scandal embroil the titular character in the turmoil. With bags of bread, pockets of money, and an endless stream of apologies to people he doesnt know for a problem he didnt cause, he breaks yet another promise to his daughter in order to return the womans body to Romania, tabloid reporter in tow.
Ironically, its during this process that the woman, Julia, becomes a person to manager, and the mission of getting this lady properly buried, navigating the labyrinthine bureaucracy that takes everything and nothing into account, dealing with Julias surly, lost soul of a son, and coping with the hostile middle-European winter, becomes more personal than he could have ever imagined.
This is a quirky film that offers much more than its unorthodox style that veers from tragedy to comedy and back again without every quite losing the laser-like focus on the struggle for people to assert their unique identity in a world that may not care. Its a flavor that confounds at every turn, not with jarring disappointment, but with the grace with which Riklis pulls it off, starting with a morgue attendant with a pixie smile who, when asked for the bodies of the suicide bombing, asks without irony or missing a beat,, Pizzeria or bus stop?. It carries through with the Israeli Consul in Romania, a woman in an inflated hat, with a savvy if grounded sense of how things work in a country that is, she reminds the manager, is neither East nor West. The savvy includes reluctantly letting the manager make mistakes even if in means embroiling her beloved Romanian husband in the misadventures of an ill-timed trip through Romanias hinterlands. The complications multiply, the ice storm brews, and the close quarters of a rickety van with a Julias coffin tied to the roof take their toll, also in ways that confound, but dont disappoint, and that in their own peculiar way, make sense of a place and a set of circumstances that defy having sense made of them.
THE HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER works in no small measure because of the subtle editorial choices Riklis makes along the way. His is a spare, almost stark style that nonetheless finds unexpected harmonies in the desolation of blasted landscapes and careworn faces, none better than Ivanirs. From sleepwalking resignation over the hopelessness of finding happiness, or even a reason to wake up in the morning, to a fully engaged human being, it is a layered unfolding that is sweet to behold, wickedly funny, and heartbreaking.
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