It certainly is, thanks for posting.
However, I beg to differ in the interpretation. First and foremost, what I saw was not "beasts of burden" but deeply touching humanity - something that commercial cinema rarely achieves. This effect was achieved in the film by a very careful use of metaphors - the juxtaposition of stakhanovite mythology and the drab barren landscape creates a space occupied by miners and their families, a space filled with quintessentially human qualities - work to survive, camaraderie, love, family, caretaking, homestead. I do not think that the personal relations depicted in the film were "calloused" in any way - au contraire - they were very touching yet very plain and ordinary (an effect superbly achieved by the dynamic juxtaposition of metaphors of different order.)
Another point, hyper-realism is never the absence of metaphor, but rather a metaphor of a different order. It can exist only in the world of "first order" metaphors, which present themselves as figures of speech, as something conspicuously non-literal. These are the 'polite' metaphors that introduce themselves by saying 'Hi, we are metaphors' and then adding, as if it were an afterthought', "our role is to depict something else than ourselves in a metaphorical way." Hyper-realism, by contrast, is a "rude" metaphor, one that pushes what it depicts right into your face without even introducing itself, like a street hawker in a big city. And this rudeness works aesthetically only in the context of those other 'polite' metaphors, just like the 'bohemian' life style works only as a negation of bourgeois respectability, and would be pretty meaningless if the latter did not exist.
The above can by illustrated with juxtaposing socialist realism with its "polite" counterpart - baroque/rococo - both samples located in the same geographical milieu, just a few kilometers from each other.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Socreal_decoration_in_Warsaw.JPG
http://www.warszawa.com/cmarter.asp?doc=1527
Socialist realism as an aesthetic form works only because it negates, so to speak, the metaphor-like appearance of baroque decoration and puts the "reality" right into the viewer's face.
I think that the film builds on that relationship between metaphors of different order and subverts it by putting the formerly "rude" socialist realist metaphor (Stakhanovite representations) in the role of a "polite" metaphor (previously "reserved" for baroque representations) and then introducing the new "rude" metaphor that puts reality right into your face without even introducing itself (representation of the barren landscape and bleak working conditions.)
Wojtek
On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 9:50 PM, Chuck Grimes <c123grimes at att.net> wrote:
> Below is a link to a documentary short on manual labor in the Ukraine:
>
> http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/general/2010/10/2010101113656323582.html
>
> Boy this is some good stuff. Hard beauty. The secrete to neo-realism is it
> has no metaphorical dimension---it just IS. I sure would like to write like
> this video looks.
>
> Some thoughts. The sound of the chisel driven into the mineral casement,
> contains the promise of a tiny motherlode breaking off. You can hear it
> ready to break loose. When it breaks, that is all there is to job
> satisfaction.
>
> I am afraid nobody who hasn't worked at this level of struggle actually
> understands its great burden and great release. Kill yourself, but you get
> to the end of the day.
>
> Of course the miner should leave his wife alone and draw his own damned
> bath, wash his filth away and return to her, with love and care, and the
> terrible rough touch that makes a man's hands incapable of love because they
> cause pain and not pleasure. I used to use a women's hand lotion, but it was
> not strong enough. You have to touch through cloth or hair because your
> hands are calloused, cracked, course, and have no beauty left to give. As
> such a life takes its course, your soul becomes like your body and hands and
> has such roughness, it is barely capable of friendship, let alone love of
> the kind that might be needed and enjoyed. I have to say only older women
> have the ability to see this struggle in themselves and in men. It is
> completely not available to the young.
>
> Perhaps that explains the love of animals, like the baby goat in the
> household scene. I think we forget, now I tread on threatened ground, that
> women too, in their child baring, the roughness of that, and its tremendous
> obligation that weighs heavy on the soul undergo a similar rude
> transformation.
>
> We are the beasts of burden, of reproduction and work, my hands and bitter
> soul resemble the cracked hoofs of horses and cattle, the pussy is the organ
> of reproduction worked to death to produce labor---and for what? God damned
> capital---fuck you. The great sadness of men and women is to watch their
> children go---and be destroyed.
>
> Salud,
>
> CG
>
> ps. I want to write something in honor of the public health nurse. We were
> bantering about down at University and Sixth. What a pleasure. She was
> certainly no less political than any political you ever met. We enjoyed out
> time, she handing me form after form, me filling them out. I got two
> shots...what a fucking treasure that was. So I go to the billing lady, a
> heavy set black woman with pink eye glasses. Love those pink glasses, I
> said, she smiled one of those miracle smiles, and I followed with, you mean
> you enter these forms in the computer? Total cynicism, yes dear. The comedy
> of the real.
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